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DR. TALMAGE IX TII2 PARLOR OF HIS HOME. 



AUTHORIZED AND AUTHENTIC 

LIFE AND WORKS 

OF '7C/ 



T. De Witt Talmage 

By 

CHARLES EUGENE BANKS 

» » 

THE NOTED AUTHOR AND POET 
ASSISTED BY 

GEO. C. COOK and MARSHALL EVERETT 



A carefull study of the most unique figure ever seen in the pulpit; with a 
close analysis of his character and the voluminous 
product of his genius. 

Fully Illustrated with Portraits and Photographs 



His Wit, Humor and Pathos Profusely 
Illustrated by His Own Words 

A Volume of Christian Philosophy 

and Love - • ' • 



Copyright, 1902, By Henry Neil 



THE BIBLE HOUSE 

21 PLYMOUTH PLACE, - - CHICAGO, ILL. 



THE HBRAHV 0»- 

CONGRESS, 
T««0 COWES Rec&veo 

JUN. 12 1902 

COPVSI6HT ENTRY 

CLASS ^XXc. NO 
COPY B 




DR. TALMAGE'S CHURCH IN WASHINGTON. 




P 7'L:.I"G''S ITOMIZ IN WASHINGTON, WHERE HE DIED. 




REV. T. DE WITT TALT^FAGE. 



DR. TALMAGE IN HIS HOME IN WASHINGTON. 




DR. TALMAGE IN HIS LIBRARY AT HOME. 




CHARLES H. PARKHURST. 



JOSEPH COOK. 



T. DeWITT TALMAGE. 




MRS. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, 




HENRY WARD BEECHER. 




# 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 




DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



PREFACE. 



THE life of Thomas DeWitt Talmage will be an inspiration to all men 
for centuries to come. Of all the great American preachers he made 
the greatest impression on his time. A man of sublime imagination 
he drove the chariot of his genius ever under the battlements of Heaven. A 
rebel by nature, he overthrew customs and creeds of the church, but like the 
reforms of the Master he so loved and honored, his reforms purified the tem- 
ple but left the structure itself unharmed. He fought with humanity for 
humanity. He despised hollow forms so much that he sometimes touched 
the border of the ridiculous in his anxiety to overthrow them. But he was 
so grandly, deeply, humanely in earnest that his most glaring faults came at 
last to act as servants to his virtues. In all his preaching (and who has done 
anywhere near so much of it), he took Christ for his model. He says of the 
Savior: ''He upset all their notions as to how preaching ought to be done. 
There was this peculiarity about his preaching— the people knew what he 
meant. His illustrations were taken from the hen calling her chickens 
together ; from salt ; from candles ; from fishing-tackle ; from a hard creditor 
collaring a debtor. How few pulpits of this day would have allowed him 
entrance? He would have been called undignified and familiar in his style. 
And yet the people went to hear him. The philosophers sneered at his minis- 
trations and said, 'this will never do.' The lawyers caricatured, but the com- 
mon people heard him gladly." 

This criticism applies to Talmage himself as no other utterance could do. 
He had felt the scoffs, and flings, and jeers of the polite in church affairs. He 
had been tried by a synod of the Presbyterian church for buffoonery in the 
pulpit. Because he believed in humanity as it is, and not in the tailor-made 
article, because he believed there was as great a prayer in an innocent laugh 
as in a groan of remorse; because he believed in the utterance that came hot 
from the heart rather than in the polished rhetoric of the dim and dusty study, 

17 



18 



PREFACE. 



he was on the point of being driven from the pulpit. If the preachers and 
elders could have had their way in 1879 this mighty voice, that has in all the 
intervening years from that day to this never ceased crying out to the troubled 
world : "Right thinking, right living mean right dying and a life immortal," 
would have been stilled at the outset. Because he had a message to deliver 
and thought more of the message than he did of the words in which it was 
clothed pious purists would have sent him into ignominious silence. Better 
disgraced, or dead, they thought, than to go on to overthrow the etiquette of 
the pulpit. So wedded to forms was the church of even thirty years ago that 
Talmage was forced to stand a trial which lasted nearly four months, and 
which discovered unfathomed depths of bitterness, because he allowed his 
sympathies full play in the pulpit, was not ashamed of a tear on his own 
cheeks, yet hesitated not to rainbow that tear with a sunbeam of his wit. 

But he did not change because of this criticism. Year after year he 
preached on to the largest congregations that ever continued to hear one man. 
And the people went to hear him! Why? Because he was a. great, human 
personality. "We spend three years in college studying ancient mythology," 
he says, "and three years in the theological seminary learning how to make a 
sermon, and then we go out to save the world ; and if we cannot do it accord- 
ing to Claude's Sermonking or Blair's Rhetoric or Kame's Criticism, we will 
let the world go to perdition. If we save nothing else, we will save Claude 
and Blair. The work of the religious teacher is to save men ; and though every 
law of grammar should be snapped in the undertaking, and there be nothing 
but awkwardness and blundering in the mode, all hail to the man who saves 
a soul from death!" 

The Reverend J. A. Singmaster, A. M., of Brooklyn, N. Y., writing in 
the Lutheran Quarterly for April, 1888, on the Elements and Power of Tal- 
mage's Preaching, says : "He is a preacher of great power. He may not be 
the greatest preacher living, but he is certainly the most popular. His congre- 
gation, numbering upwards of four thousand members, is probably the largest 
Protestant church in Christendom. He claims that about six thousand people 
were converted last year through his preaching. In this city of world-re- 
nowned preachers, he commands twice as many hearers as any other. Indeed, 



PREFACE. 



while men of distinguished learning and reputation even as classic orators 
preach to a handful, the tabernacle is crowded to the doors. When other 
churches are poorly attended on account of inclement weather, there is often 
not standing room there. I believe there are fifty churches in Brooklyn whose 
combined Sunday evening congregations are easily outnumbered by the people 
who throng to hear Talmage. Nor is this the exception ; it is the rule. For 
nearly a score of years he has labored here with ever increasing popularity and 
success." 

This is the statement of a Lutheran minister of pronounced reputation 
and can be depended on to be well within the facts. He further says : "This 
wonderful status has not been attained by organized lay efforts, by impressive 
music, by pastoral activity, by oratorical trickery or anything of the kind, for 
his sermons are quite as popular in the printed form as when delivered by the 
enthusiastic preacher. Of what other preacher, living or dead, since the age 
of the apostles is this true? Even Beecher's sermons lost their spell in the 
printing office, and Spurgeon's often are commonplace, divorced from the 
magic of their delivery." 

This was written fourteen years ago, when Talmage was at the height of 
his fame, but his popularity with the reading public has not diminished. Over 
fifty books are in circulation under his name. His sermons had been published 
weekly for twenty-nine years, without the exception of a week, through syndi- 
cates in 3,600 different papers, reaching, it is estimated, 30,000,000 people 
in the United States and other lands, weekly. These sermons have been trans- 
lated into most European and many Asiatic languages. Their circulation in 
newspapers, magazines and books is almost fabulous, and have made his name 
a household word to the ends of the earth. Few men have ever lived, presi- 
dents, emperors, princes, authors, philanthropists, who are as widely known 
as Talmage. 

Abundant evidence may be adduced from able and unprejudiced men to 
the great power and genius of Talmage. Spurgeon said : "His sermons take 
hold of my inmost soul. The Lord is with this mighty man. I am astonished 
when God blesses me, but not surprised when he blesses him." Reverend S. 
T. Spear pronounced him the most remarkable, impressive and profitable 



PREFACE. 



tened to — "a poet, a dramatist and a genius for the glory 
of God and the good of mankind." Dr. Prime said that his sermons were "as 
simple as Bunyan, as cogent as Wesley and as mighty as Edwards." Beecher, 
Storrs, Lyman Abbott, Talbot W. Chambers and other eminent preachers 
spoke in a similar vein. Frederick T. Frelinghuysen considered his sermons 
'*as unequaled in their power to commend Christ to men as a never-dying 
Savior." Such are the tributes of poets, scholars, orators and judges to this 
remarkable man while he was yet living. His death has accentuated his vir- 
tues and given new interest to his utterances. 

The pages of this book are dedicated to his memory. They are written 
with a keen appreciation of the genius of the man and the value of his life- 
work to the human race. From his own voluminous utterances on the almost 
numberless phases of human society an earnest endeavor has been made to 
reproduce the character, aspirations, belief and faith of this giant of the pulpit, 
this wonderful orator, writer, traveler and sublime Christian man. How 
honestly he has toiled ! How deeply he has felt ! How broadly he has sympa- 
thized! How gloriously he uttered himself! And in that utterance how 
nearly he has come to speaking your thought and mine; our joys, our griefs, 
our comedies and our tragedies. His nature was vital. He encompassed the 
world. No feature of life escaped him. He not only saw the beauty of the 
world from the mountain top but he went alone into the Garden of Geth- 
semane to wrestle with grief and despair. He loved humanity more than he 
loved ease or praise or fame. All these he threw to the winds in the early 
days of his ministry for the sake of making people think. If his earnestness 
won them all and more in the end it was not what he aimed at. He began by 
sacrificing the good opinion of those whose favor must have meant much to 
him, because he would not be unnatural ; because he could not but forget self 
in his anxiety to save souls. 

Talmage died as he had lived, in the full faith of a better life to come. In 
his sermon on Christ the Wonderful, he says: 'Tn most houses there is a 
picture of Christ. Sometimes it represents him with face effeminate; some- 
times with a face despotic. I have seen West's grand sketch of the rejection 
of Jesus; I have seen the face of Christ as cut on an emerald, said to be by 



PREfACE 



command of Julius Caesar; and yet I am convinced that i shall never know 
how Jesus looked until, on that sweet Sabbath morning, I shall wash the last 
sleep from my eyes in the cool river of heaven." 

These words now seem almost prophetic. On the eve of a Sabbath day 
God's finger touched him and he slept. Those who read the record of his 
thoughts and work in the following pages must be convinced that he closed 
his eyes for the last time on earth with a firm belief in a sweet awakening. 



TALMAGE. 

Angular, awkzvard, long of limb; 

Light of Faith on the strong, szveet face; 
Who shall stand on the heights with him! 

Rugged son of a rugged race. 
Under his feet were the worn-out forms 

Of the man-made creeds with their chilling breath, 
But his head zvas lifted above all storms, 

And he walks unharmed through the halls of Death. 

— Charles Eugene Banks. 



i 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Preface 17 

Talmage, Poem 21 



CHAPTER 1. 

THE DEATH OF TALMAGE. 
Talmage's Death — The Great Magician of the American Pulpit, the King of the Ameri- 
can Platform, the Man who Thrilled Millions of Human Souls in Europe and 
America with His Eloquence is Gone — We Shall Not Look Upon His Like Again — 
Last Hours in Washington 33 



CHAPTER 11. 
TALMAGE THE MAN. 
His Sincerity— Disregard of Conventionalities — Originality of His Methods — His Idea 
"To Throw His Line Out Into the World"— His Motto, "Arousal"— His Strength- 
Personal Appearance — Mannerisms — Quaint Symbolism of His Oratory 42 



CHAPTER III. 
BIRTH, FAMILY, AND EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 
Birth — Large Family of Brothers and Sisters — David T. Talmage His Father — His 
Character and Love of Nature — His Mother Catherine and Her Piety — Boyhood 
Incidents — His Love of Leap-Frog— Mother's Spectacles — The Face Over the 
Cradle 53 

CHAPTER IV. 
YOUTH AND EDUCATION. 
Graduated at University of New York in 1853 — Speech at Niblo's Garden — Had Become 
a Christian Three Years Before — Idea of Studying Law — Parental Prayers that He 
Might Enter the Ministry — Enters New Brunswick Theological Seminary — Gradu- 
ated and Ordained in 1856 73 



CHAPTER V. 
PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 
First Pastorate in Belleville, New Jersey, 1856— Preaching in Syracuse, 1859-1862— 
Growing Famous in Philadelphia, 1862-1869 — Chaplain of a Pennsylvania Regiment 
—Early Horror of Extemporaneous Speaking— His Story of His First Sermon so 
Preached— Saved by the Gas 78 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VL 
CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 

Page 

Talmage Called to Chicago, San Francisco and Brooklyn — Goes to the First Presbyterian 
Church of Brooklyn — Idea and Building of the Tabernacle — Possibility of a Free 
Church Decides Talmage in Favor of Brooklyn — His Sermon on the Free Church. . 89 

CHAPTER Vn. 

THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 

A Long Cherished Ideal of Talmage — Purpose of Training Laymen to Preach — Street 
Preaching Similar in Purpose to Salvation Army Idea — Likens Ministers to Briga- 
dier-Generals Without Any Troops 112 

CHAPTER Vni. 
BURNING OF THE BROOKLYN TABERNACLES. 

Regarded by Talmage as a Blessing — Quick Rebuilding of the Largest Protestant 
Church in the World — The Anniversary Discourse an Example of Talmagean 
Metaphor — Talmage's Own Description of the Conflagration — The Fire of the Spirit 125 

CHAPTER IX. 
MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 

Mary Avery, of Brooklyn, Talmage's First Wife — The Tragedy of Her Death in 1862 — 
Susan C Whittemore His Second Wife — Their Six Children — Frank, Jessie, May, 
etc. — Readers of Talmage Made to Feel Personally Acquainted With Them — 
Glimpses of His Home Life at Belleville and Elsewhere 155 

CHAPTER X. 

BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 

Domestic Life Overarches and Undergirds All Life — Grandeur of Individuality and the 
Necessity of Contrasts — Marriage the Beneficent Legacy of Eden — Free-Loveism 
the Bane of Modern Society 170 

CHAPTER XI. 

TALMAGEAN ORATORY. 

Colloquial and Dramatic— Disregard of Conventionalities — Contrasts With Rich Men's 
Churches and Their Preachers — Stories Illustrative of the Character of the Man — 
Tricks of Manner and Speech 184 

CHAPTER XII. 
UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 

Interest Shown in Men and Their Employments — His Display of the Practical Knowl- 
edge of Commercial Travelers, Clerks and Telegraphers — Finds Something in the 
Bible That Applies Directly to Every One 197 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER XIII. 
LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 

Page 

What a Study of Talmage Reveals — His Great Love for Nature in All Her Forms- 
Hunting for Seclusion in a Country Home — Criticism of a Rural Village — Poetry of 
the Woods, Fields and Mountains 222 



CHAPTER XIV. 

HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 

Hutnor Necessary to Eminence in Literature — Chaucer and Shakespeare Models of the 
Brooklyn Divine — His Fine Sense of the Ridiculous — Pathos Often Saved Him From 
Ridicule — Some of His Characteristic Stories — His Quaint Drawing of the Sexton . . 242 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 

The Charge and Specifications — The Details of the Trial — "Away With Technicalities 
and Give Us Eternal Justice" — The Acquittal of Talmage by the Presbytery — Public 
Opinion Pro and Con as Expressed in the Nation and Elsewhere — The Great Tri- 
umphs of Talmage Subsequent to the Trial 269 



CHAPTER XVI. 

LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 

Talmage Becomes a Star on the Lecture Platform — Taken to England Under the Man- 
agement of Major J. B. Pond — Overwhelmingly Welcomed by the English People — 
His Manager Swamped with Requests for Dates — Estimate of the People of Great 
Britain 287 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 

Sailing Up the Tay — Visits Church and Grave of Robert Murray McCheyne for Inspira- 
tion — Beautiful Women of Scotland — Beautiful Banks of the Tay — Sermons Drawn 
From Ruined Castles — Unpronounceable Names of Wales 288 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 

The Land of Goldsmith, Grattan, Burke and O'Connell — If Orators Were Demanded 
They Would Spring From the Peat Beds — Oppression Gives Birth to Great Souls — 
Great Improvement in Ireland — Help for the Famine Stricken of Ireland and 
Russia 340 



30 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER XIX. 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 

Page 

Pleasing Dissertations on Education, Growth, Development — The Folly of Flirtation — 
The Useful Friend — Modesty a Necessary Accomplishment — Dissertation on Dress 
— Honesty An Active Principle 356 

CHAPTER XX. 

TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 

His Purpose in Going to Write a Life of Christ — The Journey to Athens — Talmage 
Preaches On Mars' Hill, Where Paul Once Preached— He Tells How and Where 
He Wrote "From Manger to Throne" — Talmage Baptizes an American in the River 
Jordan 385 

CHAPTER XXL 

FAREWELL TO BROOKLYN. 

Decision Not to Rebuild the Tabernacle After Fire of 1894 — Dr. Talmage Called to 
Washington — Celebration of His Silver Jubilee in Brooklyn — His Connection With 
the First Presbyterian Church of Washington — Retires From Ministry — Editor of 
Religious Weeklies 399 

CHAPTER XXn. 

TALMAGE ON THE THEATER. 

A Lover of Histrionic Art, A Foe to Theatrical Vices — A Sermon He Never Preached — 
"I Am Too Busy to Hunt Down Lies" — The Theater a Good Place in Which to 
Preach the Gospel 408 

CHAPTER XXni. 

TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 

Talmage's Idea that Ingersoll Helps Rather than Harms Religion — Talmage Not at 
His Best in Denouncing Intellectual Evil — His Power Against Moral Evil — His 
Appeal to the Heart in the Great Passage, "Burn the Bibles" — Certain Sophistries 
Employed by Talmage 418 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

TALMAGE ON RUM. 

The Awful Ravages of Alcohol — Allegory of the Four Fiends — What the Inebriate Suf- 
fers — Loss of Property, Position and Family— Impossibility of Reform Without the 
Help of God— "O Thou Recruiting Officer of the Pit, I Hate Thee" 436 

CHAPTER XXV. 

TALMAGE ON THE CHINESE. 

A Challenge of the Law of Exclusion — Christian Nation Has No Right to Exclude Any 
Human Being — Estimate of Chinese Character — Missionary Work Among the Mon- 
golians Has Good Results 446 



CONTENTS. 81 

CHAPTER XXVI. ' 
THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 

Page 

Life Itself the Chief Source of His Culture — A Student of the Fine Arts— Talmage on 
Turner — Thomas Webster, Painter of Boys — Rosa Bonheur's Hayfield — Fig Leaves 
— The Culture of Travel — Description of the Champs Ely sees 456 

CHAPTER XXVIL 

A VISION OF THE FUTURE. 

Talmage Prophesies the "Sundown" of His Own Life— The Glories of the Night— The 
Evening of Christian Sorrow — Grand Old Age — To-day the Early History of Every- 
thing Good — Insecurity of All Earthly Treasure. 471 



CHRONOLOGY OF TALMAGE'S LIFE. 



Born Bound Brook, N. J Jan. 7th, 1832 

Became a Christian 1850 

Graduated University of New York 1853 

Studied Law. 1853 

Entered New Brunswick Theological Seminary 1853 

Graduated and Ordained , , 1 856 

Pastor of Reformed Church of Belleville, N. J 1856- 1859 

Pastor of Reformed Church of Syracuse, N. Y 1859- 1862 

The Tragic Death of His First Wife, Mary Avery 1862 

Pastor of Reformed Church of Philadelphia 1862- 1869 

Chaplain of Pennsylvania Regiment 1863 

Married Susan Whittemore 1864 

Called to Brooklyn Second Presbyterian Church March 22nd, 1869 

The First Tabernacle Built 1870 

Founding of the Tabernacle Lay College 1872 

Burning of the First Tabernacle Dec. 22nd, 1872 

The Second Tabernacle Built 1873 

Became Editor of The Christian at Work 1873 

Became Editor of The Advance 1876 

Tried for Falsehood and Acquitted by Brooklyn Presbytery May, 1879 

Triumphant Lecture ToUr of England i June- Sept., 1879 

Burning of the Second Tabernacle. Oct. 27, 1889 

Journey to the Holy Land 1889 

Return from the Holy Land Feb. 3d, 1890 

The Third Tabernacle Dedicated April 26th, 1891 

Burning of the Third Tabernacle May 13th, 1894 

Death of Mrs. Talmage August 5th, 1895 

Succored Starving Russians and Conferred with the Czar 1892 

Called to Washington 1 895 

Married Mrs. Collier Jan. 22nd, 1898 

Retired from the Ministry 1899 

Died April 12th, 1902 

32 



LIFE OF T. DeWITT TALMAGE. 



CHAPTER 1. 

THE DEATH OF TALMAGE. 

TALMAGE IS DEAD THE GREAT MAGICIAN OF THE AMERICAN PULPIT, THE 

KING OF THE AMERICAN PLATFORM, THE MAN WHO THRILLED MILLIONS 
OF HUMAN SOULS IN EUROPE AND AMERICA WITH HIS ELOQUENCE IS 

GONE— WE SHALL NOT LOOK UPON HIS LIKE AGAIN LAST HOURS IN 

WASHINGTON. 

The end came quietly, peacefully, without a struggle, at the great clergy- 
man's home on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington at nine o'clock in the 
evening, Saturday, April 12th, 1902. He had been unconscious for many 
hours, and the end came gradually. No remedies that the specialists were able 
to administer had any effect upon the congestion and inflammation of the 
brain, and after the consultation of the physicians at one-thirty in the after- 
noon, the anxious relatives and friends had been told to resign themselves, 
for the end was near and sure. The stricken preacher was merely lingering. 
Visitors thronged the residence all day, but were denied admittance to the 
sick-room. The sons and daughters were all at the residence, the trained nurse 
sat watching for the final sign, and when she perceived it, summoned the fam- 
ily to the bedside. Amid their prayers the soul of T. DeWitt Talmage left 
its clay. 

So passed the man who was undoubtedly the best-known clergyman on 
earth, whose fame was world-wide, whose sermons Queen Victoria included 
among her favorite books, whose personal friendship was highly valued by 
the Czar of Russia, whose name was and is a household word in hundreds of 
thousands of homes in America, England and her colonies, and whose soul- 
inspiring words, written and spoken, reached millions every week, and whose 

33 



34 



THE DEATH OF TALMAGE. 



striking sermons will for years be read, and to those who have heard him it 
will be as though they heard him preaching from the grave. In the opinion 
of eminent divines his sermons will be read for generations. 

When Dr. Talmage set out from his home in Washington for New Or- 
leans, on February 12, he was in excellent health and spirits. He went to fulfil 
a long-standing preaching engagement in the Crescent City, where the congre- 
gation of the First Presbyterian Church, and thousands of citizens affiliated 
with other churches, were looking forward to his visit with pleasure. His 
southern journey was destined to be an eventful one. He narrowly escaped 
a train wreck at Valdosta, Ga., caused by an open switch. As it was, the 
train in which he rode was so roughly shaken up that all the passengers suf- 
fered, though not seriously. The Doctor fortunately escaped with no worse 
misfortune than the loss of part of his baggage. 

At New Orleans, a remarkable welcome awaited him. He was received 
by a distinguished deputation with the utmost cordiality. When he went, on 
the following Sunday, to the First Presbyterian Church, he found a great mul- 
titude assembled, the large building densely packed within, and a much vaster 
gathering out-of-doors, unable to obtain admittance, as auditorium, galleries, 
and even the organ-loft, were filled almost to suffocation. Thousands went 
away disappointed, but an immense crowd remained outside while the service 
lasted. He spoke with even more than usual force and conviction, and it was 
evident that the message was enriched by Divine power and made a blessing 
to many. It seemed to reach the hearts of his auditors and to evoke responses 
which may have a marked spiritual influence upon the future of many lives. 
Seldom has Dr. Talmage, in all his long experience as a preacher, faced such 
a multitude. Only at the memorable gatherings around the Academy of 
Music, New York; at Ocean Grove, where he preached the Gospel to 10,000 
hearers ; at the various Chautauquas, and during his preaching tours in Great 
Britain, has he enjoyed the great privilege of addressing similar assemblages. 

Leaving New Orleans, he proceeded to Mexico City, where he arrived safe- 
ly, though somewhat fatigued with the labors he had undergone. He was to 
preach and lecture in the Mexican capital. Though the city has an altitude 
of several thousand feet above sea level, it is unhealthy for foreigners, unless 



THE DEATH OF TALMAGE. 



35 



they are fully acclimated. Shortly after his arrival, he had premonitions of 
an attack from his old enemy, the grip, but his health had been so robust that 
he gave these warnings little heed. In a few days they became more pro- 
nounced, and one morning, after a restless night, he found himself a thor- 
oughly sick m.an. His physician advised his removal to Washington at once, 
and as every hour seemed to aggravate his condition, his wife and friends pre- 
pared for the homeward journey, which was begun without delay. 

He was still quite ill when he reached Washington and was conveyed to 
his home at No. 1400 Massachusetts avenue, where, under careful nursing, 
he soon began to improve. The lethargy^ slowly gave way before returning 
strength, and on ^londay, i\Iarch 24, his wife and family and his friends all 
over the world were pathetically gladdened with the too hopeful news that 
the patient was on the road to recovery. 

For a week the patient's supposed convalescence progressed, and the pros- 
pects for complete recovery were regarded as excellent, no set-back being 
apprehended. Dr. G. L. IMagruder, the chief physician in attendance, issued 
this statement under date April i : 

"Dr. Talmage's condition is very satisfactory this morning. There is 
marked improvement in every respect." 

Hope grew strong, but it was unfortunately without basis, and after alter- 
nate cheer and gloom, a bulletin issued on the twelfth by the attending physi- 
cians said: "Dr. Talmage is gradually sinking. He may last through the 
evening. He is profoundly unconscious." 

During Dr. Talmage's illness, hundreds of telegrams and letters of inquiry 
were received at his home in AA'ashington from all parts of the countr}^, and 
some even from distant lands. These messages of kindly interest poured in 
upon Mrs. Talmage in such numbers that to reply to all became impossible. 
They showed how deep, widespread and genuine was the love that glowed in 
countless hearts for the famous preacher, for whose recovery fervent petitions 
were being offered everywhere, but which God in his providence saw fit not 
to grant. 

The great preacher's last rational words were uttered the day preceding 
the marriage of his daughter Llaud, on Wednesday, when in reply to a ques- 



/ 



/ 

36 THE DEATH OF T ALU AGE, 

tion he weakly said: ''Of course I know you, Maud." The attending phy- 
sicians gave up hope Thursday evening, abandoned all efforts to save the 
life of their patient and waited for the end, which was known to be merely 
a matter of hours. Dr. Talmage had shown an astonishing amount of 
vitality and but for his superb physique would have succumbed to the dis- 
ease much sooner. 

WORKED HIMSELF TO DEATH. 

Dr. G. L. Magruder, the family physician, paid frequent visits to the 
Talmage home, but on a call Saturday morning he decided that it w^ould 
be not only useless but cruel to make further efforts to prolong the patient's 
life. The disease had advanced to such a point that it was plain that death 
w^as certain and that nothing could be done to relieve him. Consequently 
the devoted wife, daughters, sons and others gathered about to watch for 
the end. 

Said Dr. Magruder, in discussing Dr. Talmage's case: "Nothing but 
the patient's wonderfully vigorous condition has been keeping him alive. 
We stopped treatment, as nothing can benefit him, and it would be cruel 
to attempt experiments. His condition is due to congestiooi brought about 
by excessive mental work under unfavorable conditions. In recent years 
Dr. Talmage has suffered greatly from insomnia, but in spite of this he 
did not relax his intellectual labors. He was an indefatigable worker and 
never spared his brain. The result was it gave in to the strain and became 
congested. 

"Dr. Talmage literally worked himself to death. Only his splendid 
physique and remarkable constitution enabled him to keep up his literary 
work while in constant suffering from insomnia. Almost any other man 
would have collapsed long before. There has never been any doubt in 
the diagnosis of his case, and the treatment has been uniform from the 
first." 

LAST DAYS OF TALMAGE. 

The last day of Dr. Talmage's life passed as the two days which preceded 
it. The patient was simply dying. His vital force was ebbing slowly away. 
As complications became more serious, Dr. Magruder called in advice. 



THE DEATH OF T ALU AGE, 



37 



The congestion of the brain grew out of an effusion, or accumulation of 
fluid, the pressure of which caused a deadening of sensibilities and gradual 
death. The exact cause of death was the pressure of this fluid on the 
brain, as in the case of apoplexy, when the rupture of a blood vessel permits 
a great flow of blood to bear down upon the vital organs. 

Several days ago Dr. Magruder called for assistance upon Dr. A. B. 
Richardson, the superintendent of the Government Hospital for Insane. 
Dr. Richardson is a specialist in brain troubles, and it was hoped he might 
be able to administer treatment which would bring relief. All he could 
do, however, was to direct Dr. Magruder in methods calculated to make 
the patient comfortable. He saw almost immediately that there was no 
chance , for ultimate recovery. About the same time the services of Dr. 
C. W. Richardson were requested. The latter is a speciaHst in afflictions 
of the throat and nose. His services were sought in the hope he could 
relieve the troublesome conditions arising from the severe attack of catarrh. 
He succeeded in a measure, although his duties, for the most part, were 
similar to those of the other consulting physician. He endeavored to 
make Dr. Talmage's last hours pass with as little pain as poissible. 

During the evening a great many friends of Dr. Talmage and of his 
family called at the home to express their sorrow at the death of one whom 
they loved and admired and to extend sympathy with the family. 

The end came so peacefully, after days of unconsciousness, that the 
devoted watchers at his bedside scarcely knew when he breathed his last. 
The immediate cause of death was inflammation of the brain. 

At Dr. Talmage's bedside, besides his wife, were the following members 
of his family: Rev. Frank De Witt Talmage;, Chicago; Mrs. Warren G. 
Smith, Brooklyn; Mrs. Daniel Mangum, Brooklyn; Mrs. Allen E. Donnan, 
Richmond; Mrs. Clarence Wyckoff, and Miss Talmage, of Washington. 
Aside from the family of the great preacher and the attending nurses, the 
only other person present was Dr. Talmage's old friend. Dr. T. Chalmers 
Easton, pastor of the Eastern Presbyterian Church, of Washington. 

'Tt was just as the hands of the clock pointed the hour of 9 Saturday 
night," said Dr. Easton, *'when the soul of the good man passed away. I 



38 



THE DEATH OF TALMAGE. 



offered a consolatory prayer as the soul of Dr. Talmage passed across the 
great unknown. His end was most peaceful and he died without the least 
shadow of pain.'* 

A SIMPLE FUNERAIi. 

The funeral services in Washington and Brooklyn were extremely simple, 
there being, in connection with the obsequies, neither procession nor funeral 
sermon. In accordance with the wishes of the deceased the rites were cele- 
brated without ostentation. The services were held at 5 o'clock in the Church 
of the Covenant, after which the body remained in the edifice until a late hour 
in order to give the family and friends an opportunity for a last look upon 
the face of the great preacher. At 12:10 a. m. Wednesday the body was 
taken by special train to Brooklyn, thence direct to Greenwood Cemetery. No 
services were held in Brooklyn, except at the grave itself. 

Dr. Teunis S. Hamlin had charge of the services at the Church of the 
Covenant. Besides himself other personal friends of the Talmage family 
delivered short addresses, among them Dr. Thomas Chalmers Easton, of 
Brooklyn, and Dr. J. S. Nichols, of St. Louis. Music was furnished by the 
regular male quartette of the church, "Lead, Kindly Light," being the prin- 
cipal hymn sung. 

The following were the honorary pallbearers: Associate Justices Harlan 
and Brewer of the United States Supreme Court, Senators Cullom, of Illinois ; 
Burrows, of Michigan, and Dolliver, of Iowa ; ex-Secretary of State John W. 
Foster, Representative William Alden Smith, of Michigan ; the Rev. Dr. 
Bittinger, and the Rev. A. S. Fiske, of this city; the Rev. Dr. Louis Klopsch, 
of New York; Dr. G. Lloyd Magruder, Dr. Talmage's physician; B. H. 
Warner, E. H. Branch and F. M. Lawrence, all old friends of the great 
preacher. 

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE MAN". 

The Rev. T. De Witt Talmage was equally effective as a lecturer on gen- 
eral topics and as a preacher of the gospel. His Christianity was broad- 
minded and liberal. He himself described his methods and ideals as before 



THE DEATH OF TALMAGE. 



39 



all else unconventional. He differed from all other men because in him 
was the originality of genius. He followed the advice of Chaucer: 

"Hold the highway, look up, thank God for all, 
And let the ghost (the spirit) thee lead 
And truth shall deliver, it is no dread." 

The fascinating facts of his career are to be outlined in the following 
chapters; and in this place we shall give only a broad and general idea of his 
character and achievement. 

In addition to his labors as preacher and popular lecturer, Dr. Talmage 
was a most voluminous writer. A constant writer for the newspapers, a 
steady contributor to the magazines, he still found time to make many books. 

He published during his busy Brooklyn pastorate as many as fourteen 
volumes, besides several volumes of collected sermons and a number of 
lectures and addresses. 

Talmage was looked upon by many as having been too sensational in his 
methods, but no one ever doubted his power with men, his ability to draw^ 
mighty audiences wherever and whenever he was announced to preach or 
lecture. 

His was a name to conjure with, and in the day of his power he was 
easily the king of the American platform. 

Those who derided his methods went still to hear him, and, hearing him 
they had to confess his marvelous gift of speech and his wonderful personal 
magnetism. 

During his twenty-five years at Brooklyn he made for himself a world- 
wide reputation as pulpit orator and popular lecturer. 

The great tabernacle, with a seating capacity of 5,000, was always taxed 
to the full limit, and for many years the sermons weekly preached from his 
pulpit were regularly printed in full in hundreds of newspapers throughout 
the English-speaking world. 

HIS TRIPS ABBOAD. 

During the last ten years of his life Dr. Talmage made several extensive 
trips abroad, preaching in all the larger cities of England and the continent 



40 



THE DEATH OF TALMAGE, 



to mighty congregations. His fame had gone before him, and the great 
cathedral churches of the old world were not large enough to hold the thou- 
sands who wanted to hear the famous divine from America. 

Perhaps the highest honor that the great preacher received while abroad 
was the invitation to visit and dine with the Czar of Russia, which invitation 
came to him direct from the mighty Czar himself. 

Talmage accepted the invitation, held his own in the august presence of 
royalty, and got out without sacrificing one jot or tittle of his good, old- 
fashioned democratic principle. 

COUNTRY'S MOST NOTED CLEBGYMAN. 

By his death the country loses its most noted clergyman. Not since the 
day of Henry Ward Beecher has a pulpit orator had the nation for his 
audience. Differing as the two men did in character and methods, their 
hold upon the public was largely the same, and their names were familiar 
in every Christian household. 

Dr. Talmage exercised a wide influence upon the rehgious thought 
of his day. Wherever he appeared in the pulpit he was greeted by enor- 
mous congregations. His rise to prominence has been attributed to his 
eccentricities, but this will not explain the continuance of his grasp. We 
have had so-called sensational preachers who for a time drew their crowds, 
but their vogue passed away, and t^hey lapsed into obscurity. Probably 
at nof time had Dr. Talmage been stronger with the religious people than 
in' the latter years of his life. 

Another answer to the charge of eccentricity, which was entirely per- 
sonal, was the popularity which his written sermons enjoyed. They have 
been printed as regular features in the Monday morning issues of the 
leading papers in the United States. In this way the eminent divine reached 
what has been estimated at 20,000,000 people. Certainly there could be 
no better test that the words and not the peculiarities of the man were 
responsible for his influence. 

If one were to attempt to gauge the secret of Dr. Talmage's power 
he would pronounce it to be an almost inspired optimism. He looked on 



THE DEATH OF T ALU AGE. 



41 



the bright side of things. He took no gloomy view of life, and no phase 
of modern life could induce him to croak or snarl. The world was growing 
better instead of worse; humanity's mission could not end in failure. This 
cheeriness was contagious and encouraging. If he took occasion to offer 
criticism, he accompanied his rebuke with helpful suggestion, thus giving 
a wholesome tone to his remarks. 

Orthodox without being a stickler for rigidity in doctrine, he preferred 
to draw a simple and appealing lesson from his text, something that would 
reach the hearts and understanding of all. He held before his vast con- 
gregation the lamp of hope, and in the light cast by its rays there appeared 
to him no other directions than onward and upward. 

Dr. Talmage left an estate valued at more than $300,000, of which one- 
third was bequeathed to the widow and the rest divided equally among the 
children and their descendants. About $250,000 was in personal property, 
consisting of secured notes. United States 4 per cent bonds, stock and cash 
in bank. The real estate was worth about $50,000, comprising a house at 
1400 Massachusetts avenue in Washington, D. C, and property in East 
Hampton, Long Island, and in Brooklyn. 

Dr. Talmage's widow, his son, Frank De Witt Talmage of Chicago, and 
Dr. Louis Klepsch of Brooklyn were appointed literary trustees under a 
codicil dated March 15, 1901. A prior codicil, dated simultaneously with 
the will, provided that the share of the estate to which Miss Jennie Talmage, 
the only single daughter, was entitled should be held in trust for her benefit. 

The will gave to the son, Frank, all the books, manuscripts and copyrights 
in trust, to superintend, manage and control their printing, publishing and 
sale. One-third of the money from the literary productions became the prop- 
erty of the testator's widow and the remaining two-thirds equally among 
all of his children, share and share ahke, the issue of any deceased child or 
children to receive the parent's share. 

Dr. Talmage left his library and all books, except as otherwise provided, 
to the son, Frank De Witt Talmage. 



CHAPTER II. 



TALMAGE THE MAN. 

HIS SINCERITY DISREGARD OF CONVENTIONALITIES ORIGINALITY OF HIS 

METHODS HIS IDEAL ''tO THROW HIS LINE OUT INTO THE WORLD'' HIS 

MOTTO ''arousal'' HIS STRENGTH PERSONAL APPEARANCE MANNER- 
ISMS QUAINT SYMBOLISM OF HIS ORATORY. 

This man was not a fake. He was in red-hot earnest. He stood upon 
the platform of his great free church, built according to his own plan, and 
held four thousand people spellbound. He spoke without notes, not standing 
in a conventional pulpit, but on a simple platform, and he drove his homely 
words straight to the hearts of his hearers. He did not give the "confections 
of religion," as they are daintily administered by the delicate-handed, snowy- 
banded, dilettante clergymen of fashionable congregations. To bring the 
Gospel to the masses of Brooklyn was to him a work more rugged and con- 
genial. Ultra-polite hearers were shocked by the ways he took to bring 
religion home to the business and bosoms of men. 

He was accused of being nothing but an actor, doing sensational things 
for the sake of advertisement. Those who really heard him, not about him, 
could see and did feel that whatever eccentricity there was in the man's mind, 
person or voice was natural. No insincere man ever swayed other men as 
this man did. It was not his fault if polite church-goers thought it sensa- 
tional to preach that rich and poor should sit down together in one church 
of God, and that when a man fails in business and loses the power to pay 
even for his pew then is the very time he most needs the consolations of 
religion, and then is the time to hold him in, not drive him from the church. 

What Talm.age thought, he said. No matter whose toes he trod upon, he 
spoke out the truth as vigorously as he could, and that was very vigorously 
indeed. 

While the controversy about allowing black people in the cars in Phila- 

42 



T ALU AGE THE MAN. 



48 



delphia was raging, Talmage said to his great congregation: "That feeling- 
of caste belongs to its father, the devil. I am happy in a horse-car whether 
beside me there be a ragged man, a fop, a well-dressed man or a black man." 
Then he stopped and looked about the church, saying nothing for full thirty 
seconds, when he resumed and said : 'T was waiting for some weak brother 
to get up in indignation and leave the church." 

For such radical methods Talmage was for several years attacked and 
ridiculed by the press, but his success was so great, his influence so powerful 
and so good that criticism was at last disarmed and the methods of Talmage 
were everywhere imitated. Other preachers followed his lead in preaching 
''every-day religion." 

He was afraid neither of saying what he thought nor of saying it in his 
own way. "One-half of you Christians are simply stuck in the mud!" he 
cried. "Why not cut loose from everything but God ? Give not to Him that 
formal petition made up of 'O's' — 'O Lord !' this and 'O Lord !' that. When 
people are cold, and have nothing to say to God, they strew their prayers with 
'O's' and 'Forever and ever, Amen' and things to fill up. Tell God what 
you want, with the feeling that He is ready to give it, and believe that you 
will receive, and you shall have it. Shed that old prayer you have been 
making these ten years. It is high time that you outgrew it. Throw it aside 
with your old ledgers and your old hats and your old shoes. Take a review 
of your present wants, of your present sins and of your present blessings. 
With a sharp blade cut away your past half-and-half Christian life, and with 
new determination and new plans, and new expectations, launch out into the 
deep. The church of God has been fishing too near shore." 

The disregard of conventionalities is evident. It was this disregard which 
turned finicky persons against Talmage, it was this disregard also which made 
his rushing eloquence an irresistible and mighty stream sweeping souls into 
real and fervent religious life. He did not care to be the idol of a well-dressed 
and ultra-fashionable congregation with high pew rents. He did not care to 
draw a large salary and be sought after by exclusive society women. Says 
he, attacking old-fashioned and conventional methods of running a church: 
"We set our net in a good calm place, and in sight of a fine chapel, and we 



44 



TALMAGE THE MAN. 



go down every Sunday to see if the fish have been wise enough to come into 
our net. We might learn something from that boy with his hook and Hne. 
He throws his Hne from the bridge; no fish. He sits down on a log; no fish. 
He stands in the sunlight and casts the line, but no fish. He goes up by the 
mill-dam, and stands behind the bank, where the fish cannot see him, and he 
has hardly dropped the hook before the cork goes under. The fish come to 
him as fast as he can throw them ashore. In other words, in our Christian 
work, why do we not go where the fish are? It is not so easy to catch souls 
in church, for they know we are trying to take them. If you can throw your 
line out into the world where they are not expecting you, they will be cap- 
tured." 

To "throw his line out into the world" was the constant and successful 
effort of Dr. Talmage. The old professional reticence which forbade physi- 
cians to advertise their skill and clergymen to adopt methods open to the 
charge of sensationalism could not cramp the burning genius of this man, 
nor keep him "cribbed, cabined and confined" to cut-and-dried ways of doing 
things. Speaking of the Tabernacle Lay College which he had established in 
Brooklyn and of which he became president, he says : "Is it fair to take men 
by such stratagem? Yes. I would like to cheat five thousand souls into the .king- 
dom. Our Tabernacle Free College, within one year, will be doing the work 
of many churches. The students set their net last night on the back streets, 
and will set it every night this week in many destitute places, and soon we shall 
have a hundred lay preachers, proclaiming the Gospel day by day, and week 
by week, and three or four hundred Christians prepared for other styles of 
Christian w^ork. If a man does not appreciate that work, he is stupid beyond 
all arousal." 

The keynotes of the man's character are here — "Arousal" is blazoned on 
his banner, arousal is his object, arousal from sleepy ways of doing things, 
and toward his object he goes by original paths. 

Dr. Talmage was a robust man — not only strong himself, but a source of 
strength in other men. He did not shrink from immense tasks. He was 
not afraid to proclaim that the whole policy of the Church of God as he found 
it was to be changed. Had he failed to change it he could have been set down 



TALMAGE THE MAN. 45 

as an arrogant boaster, but he did not fail. 'Instead of chiefly looking after 
the few who have become Christians," says he, ''our chief efforts will be for 
those outside. If after a man is converted he cannot take care of himself, 
I am not going to take care of him. If he thinks that I am going to stand 
and pat him on the back and feed him out of an elegant spoon, and watch him 
so that he does not get into the draught of worldliness, he is much mistaken. 
We have in our churches a mass of helpless, inane professors, who are doing 
nothing for themselves or for others, who want us to stop and nurse them !" 
So, by the strengt;h of his scorn the great preacher taught men self-reliance, 
and so, by "throwing his line out into the world" he carried Christianity into 
the factory, the engine-house, the club-room, into the houses of the sick, into 
the dark lane, into the damp cellar, into the cold garret, into the dismal prison. 
He wanted to reach, inspire and console every man, woman and child in 
Brooklyn, and did indeed reach thousands upon thousands. 

In the great horse-shoe shaped theater rose a wide pulpitless platform — 
like a stage. Back of it the great organ, in front of it the great audience, 
upon it one chair, a table large enough to hold a Bible and hymn-book and — 
Talmage. He sat looking over the audience. The organist finished his offer- 
tory, the audience rose and sang the doxology, and then the big man rose from 
his chair, came down the platform and began to talk. Then his brain seemed 
to fire with his own thoughts, he strode up and down the platform boiling 
with energy, pouring forth picture-painting words, brandishing his arms 
long enough to pull down the head of a giraffe, playing on the audience as the 
organist played on his instrument, bringing tears and then so quickly pushing 
in the stop of pathos and pulling out the stop of humor that by the time the 
tears left the eye, they rolled down smiling faces. 

He was intensely personal, he dramatized himself. He took his audience 
into his confidence and their hearts opened to him because he opened his to 
them. He could tell to three thousand people his most hidden grief, and to 
each one it would somehow seem as though he were hearing the intimate 
private confession of a personal friend. He told how he felt when his child 
died, and by the same magic each man felt the preacher's pang. He told how 
one after another came and spoke consolingly and how their words seemed 



46 



TALMAGE THE MAJST. 



cold. And then said Talmage. ''Jc^^n B. Gough came in without a word and 
threw his arms around me and cried with me, and that was sympathy!" 

OPEN ITATXTRE OF TALMAGE. 

This illustrates one of the most striking characteristics of Talmage. He 
never spared himself in his search for happy illustrations for his discourse. 
He was as open to his congregation as to his nearest and dearest friends. 
All his sermons teem with references to his facts of his own life. His 
preaching was almost always autobiographical. He delved into his inmost 
soul for truth concerning the passions, the sympathies, the inspirations of 
mankind. That he was not always at his best in the pulpit or on the lecture 
platform is not a matter for wonder. A man who speaks as he did, always 
extempore, and speaks as much as he did, cannot , hope to be continually 
on the heights. Sometimes he seems to approach coarseness, and at others 
he is flippant. But the next period may mount to the summit of Olympus 
and be of such gigantic proportions and have such glorious strength that 
all who sat within the sound of his voice must have been carried up with him 
to the gates of the heaven which to him was such a beautiful reality. 

How shall we account for the facts which make up the record of this 
great man? Are we to dismiss the whole matter with the one word sensa- 
tional? Are we to unite with the jealous or the profane and call him names? 
Surely that would be neither just nor philosophical. To ascribe his great 
success, as some of his enemies do, to such things as the accessories of the 
Tabernacle, would be to forget that he created them. To' credit it to the 
undeniable eccentricities of his delivery would be to ignore the popularity 
of his printed sermons. To account for it by supposing that his adherents 
are only shallow, unsubstantial people would be to believe what is not true. 

It is urged against him that some of his sermons are barren in thought, 
poorly arranged and the like. Of whose sermons may not this be said? 
It is 'Utterly unfair to judge a man by his failings. His church was fre- 
quently unfavorably contrasted with others on points of benevolence and 
missionary activity. This proves at most that he is greater as a preacher 
than as an organizer and pastor. It may also illustrate the adage that great 
men have great faults. 



TALMAGE THE MAN, 



NEITHER APOLOGY NOR GLORIFICATION. 

We do not apologize for him nor glorify him. He does not need the 
former; and the latter would count for little. But when a man arises in 
the pulpit to whom the world listens, the average preacher has much to learn 
from him. His eccentricities were not worse than those of other great 
preachers to whom enraptured multitudes listened in the past. Chrysostom 
and Luther were the sensationalists of their day in exposing vice and break- 
ing the pulpit trammels of the age. 

The secret of the success of Talmage is found in almost every utterance 
of the man. It is a demonstrable fact. Earnestness was the keynote of his 
character, and his influence and fame are the fruit of endowment and 
achievement. Said one of Dr. Talmage's friends: ''He is not a phenomenon 
for he can be classed, accounted for and explained. To even a casual ob- 
server enough appears in the man and in the sermon tO' explain his power. 
The source of it all is, of course, divine grace in giving him a pious ancestry, 
good natural gifts, opportunity and personal experience of its saving power. 
But to ascribe all his gifts to faith would be to forget that God operates 
through human personality and would also reflect upon hundreds of less 
able and less successful workers whose faith is not less than his. A man 
must have something besides faith to be an efhcient preacher of the Gospel." 

Talmage was what men somewhat vaguely call "a born preacher/' mean- 
ing that preaching came natural to him. As other men have a pecuHar 
and inherent fitness for art or commerce so he was by endowm.ent and bent 
of mind a preacher. He evidently did not mistake his calling, even if 
he sometimes made other preachers feel as though they had mistaken theirs. 
He could have been nothing else so well. If you take Phillips Brooks' 
definition of preaching, ''Truth through personality," and apply it tO' Tal- 
mage, you will find that he measures up to it very well. His orthodoxy 
was never impugned nor his marked individuality questioned. This latter 
characteristic makes him so prominent. He was so entirely unlike any 
other man. He was the disciple of no school. He did his work in his own 
way. He was pre-eminently himself. Men are apt to be too strongly 
influenced by their teachers and to repress their individuality tO' conform 



48 



TALMAGE THE MAN. 



to the common mould, a most harmful and absurd fashion. As well might 
men insist that lawyers and doctors and ministers should all look alike, not 
only in dress, but in countenance and stature. Talmage was a living protest 
against a mechanical ministry and as such rendered useful service. 

A MAJSr QF CONVICTION". 

He was a man of conviction. He evidently believed what he said. There 
was no wavering of opinion in him. He knew no new nor progressive the- 
ology. He preached at the last the identical truths which he proclaimed in 
the beginning. Whatever he may have invented, he did not tamper with 
truth. The theme might be fanciful, but its development brought out clearly 
and strongly some phase of truth. It was water from the old fountain, 
though it was drawn with vessels curiously and beautifully wrought. There 
was a message for this herald to deliver, and he delivered it without with- 
holding one iota as he understood it, but he did it in his own way. And 
was not his own way better for him than any other? Is it any wonder that 
men fail when they believe in a half-hearted way, to begin with, and then 
express themselves in an artificial manner? Here is a man who sets us the 
example of tremendous earnestness in accepting and teaching. It is a mis- 
take to suppose that he held his place in virtue of flattery. His denuncia- 
tions of wrong were scathing without respect of persons. With withering 
sarcasm he condemned dead formalism and held up the cross as the only 
hope of man. 

Talmage understood m,en. A knowledge of human nature is an essen- 
tial element in a great preacher. From Paul to Luther, and from Luther to 
Beecher and Spurgeon and John Hall, it has characterized every true ser- 
mon. Accepting as a definition of preaching, "Divine truth through man 
to man," it is plain that the preacher must lie open to two chief influences — 
the divine and the human. Both were illustrated in Talmage. 

He was a man among men. He seems to have entered into intimate 
personal relations with every hearer. A deep human sympathy pervades his 
sermons. People felt at home in the Tabernacle. What an unfriendly 
critic of Talmage wrote in reference to Dr. Hall, he might with equal 



TALMAGE THE MAN. 



49 



truthfulness have written of the former: ''It may be reckoned of the char- 
acteristic traits of his speaking that he ingratiates himself with his hearers. 
The speaker says pleasant things because he thinks pleasant things, and 
because he knows that he shall so dispose his hearers to receive his main 
message more favorably.'* Talmage caught the spirit of the age as fully 
as any man of his time. He knew what people will listen to and he under- 
stood how to give it. It was not his fault that this is not an era of abstrac- 
tions and theological preaching. If the Pauline spirit, being all things to 
all men, be dominant in Talmage we need not wonder at his success. 

HIS WONDERFUL RESOURCES. 

Talmage was also a man of great resources. While it is true that he 
lacked many of the graces of oratory and could scarcely be called a pro- 
found thinker, he yet had gifts and capabilities far more essential. To begin 
with, he had a strong and supple body, not indeed that robust and rubicund 
physique of Beecher, but bone and muscle apparently well knit, healthy and 
capable of much work and endurance. He had a voice like a trumpet, not 
indeed a very sweet-toned one like Spurgeon's, but possessing vast compass 
and flexibility. He had a well-disciplined and well-stored mind, a prodigious 
memory, a glowing imagination, and a warm heart. If oratory be "action/' 
then Talmage was an orator, for he was action personified, body and soul. 

Talmage was mature. By this we do not mean that he was perfect, far 
from it, but that he knew his work and understood how to do it easily. 
He seemed equal to his task, and hence never made people nervous through 
faltering or missing his train of thought or losing control of himself. Al- 
though in his initial days of preaching he was the victim of emotional 
excitement and stage-fright he overcame it as he overcame every other 
obstacle that threatened his usefulness, and became as much at home before 
thousands as most men do in the home circle. It is equally true in reference 
to the matter of his preaching. He was never in doubt, expressed no vague 
opinions. His belief being settled in his youth he has devoted himself to 
the work of inspiring a like faith in others. 

The elements of power in the sermon were the elements of power in the 



50 



T ALU AGE THE MAN. 



man. In a sense the sermon and the man are inseparable, because the very 
idea of preaching impHes human personaHty. 

Talmage's sermons are simple and intelligible. They were always de- 
livered in an audible voice, the lack of which mars many an otherwise able 
effort. Everybody in the congregation heard and understood Talmage. 
This is a characteristic of true preaching, as exemplified by Luther who 
made it a point to make truth so plain that the most uneducated servant 
could understand. Talmage carried his auditor right along. He may not 
have comprehended every allusion, may not have been always convinced, 
but he never failed to catch the meaning. 

DICTION or HIS SERMONS. 

The sermons of Talmage are remarkable for their diction. It is worthy 
of remark that, according to a table made by an Englishman, Talmage 
used a larger percentage of Saxon and cognate words than Dr. Storrs, 
Canon Farrar or even Spurgeon. His fertile and vivid imagination finds 
expression in every figure of rhetoric. Like a plunging steed it dashes for- 
ward unhindered by obstacles. What if the figures are mixed at times and 
the language inexact? ''Passion is more than form," it has been well said. 
To reject Talmage's sermons, which were generally extemporaneous, be- 
cause he had not elaborated and polished his sentences and figures, would 
be equivalent to despising a natural landscape because, perchance, of rugged 
ridges and luxuriant underbrush. Talmage was not a painter of miniatures. 
His canvas is large and the coloring bright and the figures heroic. It is to 
be remembered that his style is that of speech rather than that of the pen, 
that he illuminated rather than analyzed his theme. His ideas seem to come 
so thick and fast that even his gift of speech is taxed to give them utterance. 
Surely, if he were to pause to give each picture its proper details, we would 
lose more than we would gain. 

TALMAGE WAS DRAMATIC. 

Talmage was dramatic. This word comes dangerously near "theatrical," 
but one may be dramatic without being theatrical. Talmage was accused 
of being the latter. Perhaps he was at times. He was certainly nothing 



TALMAGE THE MAN. 



51 



if not the former. But every great preacher is draniiatic; that is, he pre- 
sents truth in life-Hke pictures and with striking effect. Stork ascribed 
Moody's influence chiefly to his dramatic power. Let any preacher, who 
is not above learning, compare his sermons with those of Talmage on the 
same texts, and he will discover that, while he may say practically the same 
things and even say them more logically, yet in point of interest, vividness 
and truth to life, those of Talmage were generally immensely superior. 
Indeed, the average sermon is apt to be dull, not because it is not learned 
or orthodox in doctrine, but because it is not true — true to nature. The 
men and the scenes are too apt to be mere caricatures or utter impossibili- 
ties. Not so with Talmage's pictures; they are possible if not actual. 

These sermons are full of illustrations. Whatever else they may con- 
tain, they always have facts illustrating the subject. What a vast and 
systematized repertory of incidents, opinions and statistics Talmage must 
have had. His sermons and addresses indicate a rich and wide experience, 
knowledge of men, extended historical reading, access to books of refer- 
ence, comprehensive indexes and perhaps scrap-books of newspaper cut- 
tings. He has been arraigned for being ''incredibly careless in his state- 
ments." We may admit the truthfulness of the charge and yet maintain 
the point we made in regard to illustration. He may have trusted too much 
to memory, but it remains true that, though the illustration may not be 
exact, it yet serves to illustrate. Remove the illustrations from his sermon 
and you destroy its effect. 

CHAMPION OF THE) rOOR. 

He was the champion of the poor and the crushed, of public morality 
against gambling, drunkenness and kindred vices. He scored fashionable 
follies with the keen edge of satire. He w^arned young men with all the 
powers of his picturesque and persuasive rhetoric and of his yearning heart 
against the temptations of city life. He preached Christ and Him crucified 
as the only hope of man. He applied the truth in such a personal manner 
that the old cry of the lost, ''What must I do to be saved?" was often heard 
at the Tabernacle. 

The points mentioned are a sufficient and rational explanation of the 



52 



TALMAGE THE MAN. 



influence of Talmage. To sum up in a sentence the reason of his success, 
he owed his success to a large combination of common qualities developed 
to a high degree. There are scores of ministers who upon single points are 
without doubt immensely his superiors, but Talmage as a great moving 
personal force has perhaps never had his equal in the pulpit. 

PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 

Dr. Talmage was in person a little above medium height, had a deep 
blue eye and sandy complexion. His face, in parlor as well as in pulpit, was 
mobile to the last degree — expressive of not only the difference between the 
grandest emotions of the heart, but of the most delicate shades of feeUng. 
He had a warmth of manner and a rush of conversational power which made 
young and old immediately at home with him. In private life he had more 
the appearance of an easy, off-hand merchant than of a clergyman. His dress 
there, as indeed in the pulpit, was exceedingly plain, but always neat and 
gentlemanly. We have set forth some of this man's peculiarities, and also 
the results which early bloomed from his ministry. They are earnest of 
the things that yet shall be, by the continued blessing of God. In his books 
he still lives, and his career even here on earth may be said to have only com- 
menced. The Master has given to few men such felicity and success in 
doing His work. Certainly the spirit in which that work was done is the 
spirit of utter consecration. Certainly, the modes and institutions through 
which and into which that work expressed itself are worthy the attention 
of the church at large, in its study of how to affect the world at large. Great 
genius and originality, freedom, training, energy and common sense were 
the secular forces imported into the Talmagean methods of religious reform. 
To them are allied the higher spiritual attributes of consecration, self -disre- 
gard, a faith as absolute as ideal fatalism, a quenchless hope, a thorough 
consciousness of the special interposition of God in behalf of His cause and 
His children, and a resolution to make religion commensurate in its appeals 
with all the circumstances of man, and as simple and beautiful in its minis- 
tries as it was in the days when the lilies, the birds, the flocks and the rills 
were texts, and the raising of the dead, the giving of sight to the blind, and 
the restoration of the halt and the deaf, were the events of pastoral visit. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE BIRTH. FAMILY, AND EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 

BIRTH LARGE FAMILY BROTHERS AND SISTERS DAVID T. TALMAGE, HIS 

FATHER CHARACTER AND LOVE OF NATURE HIS MOTHER CATHERINE 

AND HER PIETY BOYHOOD INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF TALMAGE THE 

USE HE MAKES OF THESE IN HIS SERMONS HIS LOVE OF LEAP-FROG. 

Thomas De Witt Talmage was born January 7th, 1832, in Somerset 
county, New Jersey. The little village of Gateville, in which he first saw 
light, was afterward renamed Boundbrook or Bound Brook, the name 
calling up the pretty allegory of the sportive brook which was bound by 
a mill-dam and set to work. 

Thomas was the youngest of twelve children, having five sisters and six 
brothers, one of those large, old-fashioned families that seemed to spring up 
in answer to the dumb yearning of the vast unpeopled continent to be 
peopled. In such families there are no spoiled children. Each one must 
learn to keep his elbows in, and respect the rights of others. In this large 
family it was that the great preacher learned w^hat he afterward said, *The 
home is a Republic within a Republic, a Church within a Church." The 
governing principle of the family was not only monarchic, the father being 
its natural king, but also democratic — a government of public opinion 
among the children. The little community was of that sturdy, independent 
Dutch blood which is at once obedient to the powers it really reverences, 
and is stubbornly and terribly rebellious to any and all attempts to rule it 
by any authority not recognized as rightful. 

From such a family and from such blood came Talmage — unswervingly 
obedient to what he recognized as the will of Jesus, unswervingly rebellious 
against all attempts of individual or synod to coerce him. He was by 
nature a Protestant — protesting no less against the conventionality of his 
own sect than against the ritualism of what he called the ''Mother of har- 

53 



54 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



lots — Rome." In such a family and of such blood was the man who' said 
in a sermon in his sixth year in Brooklyn. ''We are trying to maintain in 
this place a church aggressive and revolutionary." 

Like nearly all great preachers of whom the record is preserved Thomas 
De Witt Talmage was the child of parents as marked for the sterling 
qualities of their characters as for the simplicity and depth of their piety. 
His father, David T. Talmage, exceeded by thirteen years the Biblical three 
score years and ten, which were so exactly allotted to the distinguished son. 
David Talmage was a man who possessed shrewd judgment, a trait inherited 
by the son, who in order to persuade the trustees of the Central Presbyterian 
Church of Brooklyn to build the Tabernacle, gave up a salary of seven 
thousand a year, and thereby, casting, his bread upon the waters, placed 
himself in a position to earn som,etimes as much as a thousand dollars a day. 
David Talmage was as firm as he was shrewd, and in himself united those 
traits which attain their highest expression under American institutions. 
His constant communion with nature never found such brilliant literary form 
as his son gave it in the October Harper's Magazine, 1867, but the trait 
was in him none the less. Thomas made vocal what was dumb in David. 
He particularly loved the swieep of a gust of wind across a field of wheat or 
oats — that satiny change v/hich moves among the bending spears of grain, 
in progress as steady as that of a cloud across the sky. 

David Talmage had something Wordsworthian in him. He was not 
like Peter Bell, of whom Wordsworth wrote: 

'The soft blue sky did never melt 
Into his heart, he never felt 
The witchery of the soft blue sky." 

The father of the great preacher was not one of those dull souls who see 
nothing to love in nature. Looking out on nature he became aware of the 
mystery of his own mind and to love of nature added self-reflection, and 
above all else, a devout and thorough trust in God. He might have said, 
with Browning: 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE, 



55 



"I trust in Nature, spring shall plant 
And autumn garner till the end of time. 
I trust in God, the right shall be the right 
And other than the wrong while He endures. 
I trust in mine own soul that well perceives 
The inward and the outward, Nature's good and God's." 

Throughout the long career of this man he came to be the natural coun- 
selor, leader and exemplar not only to his own large family, but to all the 
people among whom he lived, not only in matters temporal, but in things 
religious. No lay Christian in New Jersey exerted . upon the church a 
deeper, more uniform, and habitually quiet effect for good, for advance, 
and for the things which made for peace. He was a member of the Dutch 
Refonned Church — in which his youngest and most distinguished son was 
trained — the denomination in which he was to begin his pastoral duties. 
The honorable successes which industry, integrity, and the application of 
common sense to common things work out, were not denied him; nor was 
a fair degree of official distinction. The relation in which David Talmage 
stands to the career of Thomas is summed up when it is stated that he was 
a man of blameless life, profound discretion, much intelligence, unaffected 
gentleness, and a richness of spiritual experience. 

Catherine Talmage, the wife of David, mother of the great preacher, 
was in every^ respect a helpmeet for her husband. Peculiar strength of char- 
acter marked him. Peculiar sweetness of character distinguished her. She 
diffused throughout her family the aroma of a meek and quiet spirit. Her 
trust was of that sort which did not know that doubt existed as its antithesis. 
Her gentle humanities were ever dispensed within the circle of her influence. 
Where sickness came, she preceded the physician; where sorrow came, the 
preacher of consolation arriving, found her there before him. Suffering 
drew her as the flowers draw the sun. ''Her Hfe was" not "a psalm;" it was 
an offertory. Looking well to the ways of her household, taking up the 
cross of motherhood only to dedicate her all to her children, and all of them 
to her God, in any community less intelligent than that of which she was 
the Dorcas and Lydia, by any religion less enlightened than Protestantism, 



56 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



she would have been canonized as a saint. As it is, the histories and tiadi- 
tions of a township are largely occupied with the recital of her charities; 
and the memories of her life and deeds, which added to the noblest quahties 
of the woman the most pronounced evidences of the Christian matron. 

From her Thomas De Witt Talmage drew^ the deep, old-fashioned, 
unquestioning faith which remained unchanged through all the changes 
of his growth. Her influence upon his intellect may have been slight, but 
her influence upon his heart was all-important, and not the intellect of Tal- 
mage but his heart made him what he was, shaped his career, gave h;m his 
power over men. 

The mother of the statesman, the warrior, the poet, or the preacher of a 
generation is the subject of the world's peculiar reverence, it being this 
tendency which, during the middle ages, exalted Mary, the Mother of 
Jesus, and thereby exalted among the common people of Europe the idea 
and ideal of motherhood. The world feels, perhaps truly, that the secret 
of a man's greatness must lie somehow in the character of his mother. 
Goethe not only knew that in his own case this was true, but was able to 
show us exactly how it was true. In the case of the mother of Talmage we 
can only divine that the expansion of his powers and talents was the normal 
growth of the seed planted by the mother's prayers, sustained by her exam- 
ple, and nourished by the blessing of heaven upon her faith. Prayers, 
example and blessing there surely were, but why this one son Thomas should 
of all the seven sons of Catherine be endowed with that indefinable quality 
called genius is a question past the plummet-reach of seer or scientist. The 
secrets of heredity lie too deep for human ken. We can see only that the 
genius was born, and grew, and became himself. The why of greatness is 
beyond philosophy. Certain influences, however, we can trace. 

The child of Christian parents and the child of old age, Thomas De Witt 
Talmage always reflected in his ministerial life a reliance as unquestioning as 
simple upon the power of old-fashioned religion, and a peculiar susceptibility 
in his sermons and pastoral labors to the feelings and infirmities of those 
whose heads are white unto the harvest of time. 

In those chatty autobiographical sketches of Dr. Talmage which he 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE, 



57 



gathered under the title ''Around the Tea-Table/' he gives no set chapter 
about his boyhood, but his memory is constantly bringing up the incidents 
of his boyhood, and these he uses as illustrations to point a moral and adorn 
a tale. Much of his material for preaching was thus unconsciously accumu- 
lated in his happy, care-free, barefoot days in Gateville. He tells how 
he sat of an evening "making two parallel lines perpendicular, and two paral- 
lel lines horizontal, and filling up the blanks with crosses and o's, and then 
crying out 'tick-tack-to, three in a row.' " His tenacious memory photo- 
graphs such scenes and games of his childhood; he looks back into his own 
child's mind, and from it draws not only sympathy with the children he 
met, but rich ore to be reworked into moral discourse. Says he: "The 
funniest play I ever joined in at school, and one that sets me laughing now 
as I think of it, so I can hardly write, is 'leap-frog.' It is unartistic and 
homely. It is so humiliating to the boy who bends himself over and puts 
his hands down on his knees; and it is so perilous to the boy who, placing 
his hands on the stooped shoulders, attempts to fly over. But I always 
preferred," adds the Doctor, characteristically, "the risk of the one who 
attempted the leap rather than the humiliation of the one who consented 
to be vaulted over. It was often the case that we both failed in our part 
and we went down together. For this Jack Snyder carried a grudge against 
me and would not speak, because he said I pushed him down a-purpose. 
But I hope he has forgiven me by this time, for he has been out as a mis- 
sionary." That Talmage, as he himself advises men to do, always remained 
young we may judge by the generous offer which follows: 

"If Jack will come this way," says the Doctor, "I will right the wrong 
of olden time by stooping down in my study and letting him spring over 
me as my children do." 

Such self-drawn traits give a better and more intimate picture, both of 
boy and man, than any that a biographer can write. 

A MOTHER'S PORTRAIT. 

The best that we know about Catherine Talmage creeps unexpectedly 
into her son's humorous disquisition on patent rocking cradles. "There 
was," writes he, "a wooden canopy at the head of the old cradle that some- 



58 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



how got loose and was taken off. But your infantile mind was most im- 
pressed with the face which much of the time hovered over you. Other 
women sometimes looked in at the child and said: That child's hair will be 
red!' or, 'What a peculiar chin!' or, 'Do you think that child will live to 
grow up?' and although you were not old enough to understand their talk, 
by instinct you knew it was something disagreeable, and began to cry till 
the dear, sweet, familiar face again hovered and rainbow-arched the sky. 
Oh, we never get away from the benediction of such a face ! It looks at us 
through storm and night. It smiles all to pieces the world's frown. After 
thirty-five years of rough tumbling on the world's couch, it puts us in the 
cradle again, and hushes us as with the very lullaby of heaven. 

Let the old cradle rest in the garret. It has earned its quiet. The 
hands that shook up its pillow have quit work. The foot that kept the 
rocker in motion is through with its journey. The face that hovered has 
been veiled from mortal sight. Cradle of blessed memories! Cradle that 
kindles so many hopes! Cradle that kindled fatigues! Sleep now thyself, 
after so many years of putting others to sleep!" 

Another passage about his mother appears unexpectedly in a diatribe 
against fine print. 

'Tt is a grand thing," writes he, *'to have a page so plain that old age can 
read it either with or without spectacles. Mother had two pairs — her 
'near-sighted' spectacles and her 'far-sighted' ones. She wore them both at 
once — one upon the forehead, the other on the nose, the distance of the 
object deciding which pair she would use. But one day she took off the 
'far-sighted' spectacles with which she had often looked toward heaven, and 
put on the 'near-sighted' ones: it was just as she went into* the Gate." 

Concerning his father, he writes in lighter vein, but in a way that capitally 
hits off the man's determined character. 

"In our early home," says he, "there was a vicious cat that would invade 
the milk-pans, and we, the boys, chased her with hoes and rakes, always 
hitting the place where she had been just before, till one day father came 
out with a plain stick of ovenwood, and with one little clip back of the ear 
put an end to all of her nine lives. You see, everything depends upon the 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



59 



style of the stroke, and not upon the elaborateness of the weapon. The 
most valuable things you try to take will behave like the bay mare; but 
what you cannot overcome by coarse persuasion, or reach at full run, you 
can catch with apostolic guile. Learn the first-rate art of doing" secular 
of Christian work, and then it matters not whether your weapon be a basin 
or a pail." 

The moral we append even as the preacher did, for the reason that it 
shows how he habitually spins the moral out. By doing it he does not 
appeal to those who prefer to draw their own moral from, a story, but those 
who prefer to have it drawn form the great majority of folk. 

REUNIONS IN THE OLD HOME. 

In writing of family reunions in general, Talmage certainly described 
the long-remembered reunions of his own old home. 

"Christmas bells ring in family reunions!" cries he enthusiastically. 'The 
rail-trains are crowded with children coming home. The poultry, fed as 
never since they were born, stand wondering at the farmer's generosity. The 
markets are full of massacred barnyards. The great table will be spread 
and crowded with two, or three, or four generations. Plant the folk astride 
the breast-bone, and with skillful twitch, that we could never learn, give to 
all the hungry lookers-on a specimen of holiday anatomy. Mary is dis- 
posed to soar, give her the wing. The boy is fond of music, give him the 
drum-stick. The minister is dining with you, give him the parson's nose. 
May the joy reach from grandfather, who is so dreadful old he can hardly 
find the way to his plate, down to the baby in the high chair with one smart 
pull of the table-cloth upsetting the gravy into the cranberry. Send from 
your table a liberal portion to the table of the poor, some of the white 
meat as well as the dark, not confining your generosity to gizzards and 
scraps. Do not, as in some families, keep a plate and chair for those who 
are dead and gone. Your holiday feast would be but poor fare for them: 
they are at a better banquet in the skies." 

How he catches the spirit of the occasion! How real he makes it by 
that one homely touch of the baby upsetting the gravy! It explains for us 



60 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



the fact that the sermons of Talmage are more popular and better known in 
rural districts than the works of any novelist. He out novels the novelist 
as a painter of country life. 

"Around the door of country meeting-houses," he says, "it has always 
been the custom for the people to gather before church and after church 
for social intercourse and shaking of hands. Perhaps because we, our- 
selves, were born in the country and have never got over it, the custom 
pleases us." 

THE FIUST CIGAR. 

One other boyish episode which he describes is, we think, as well and 
amusingly told as similar episodes have been narrated by Burdette or 
Twain, 

"The time had come in our boyhood which we thought demanded of 
us a capacity to smoke. The old people of the household could abide 
neither the sight nor the smell of the Virginia weed. When ministers came 
there, not by positive injunction, but by a sort of instinct as to what would 
be safest, they whiffed their pipe on the back steps. If the house could not 
stand sanctified smoke, you may know how little chance there was for adol- 
escent cigar-puffing. 

"By some rare good fortune which put in our hands three cents, we 
found access to a tobacco store. As the lid of the long, narrow, fragrant box 
opened, and for the first time we owned a cigar, our feelings of elation, 
manliness, superiority and anticipation can scarcely be imagined, save by 
those who have had the same sensation. Our first ride on horseback, though 
we fell off before we got to the barn, and our first pair of new boots (real 
squeaker) we had thought could never be surpassed in interest; but when 
we put the cigar to our lips, and stuck the lucifer match to the end of the 
weed and commenced to pull with an energy that brought every facial 
muscle to its utmost tension, our satisfaction with this world was so great, 
our temptation was never to want to leave it. 

"The cigar did not burn well. It required an amount of suction that 
tasked our determination to the utmost. You see that our worldly means 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE, 



61 



had limited us to a quality that cost only three cents. But we had been 
taught that nothing great was accomplished without effort, and so we pufifed 
away. Indeed, we had heard our older brothers in their Latin lessons say, 
Omnia vincet labor, which, translated, means. If you want to make any- 
thing go, you must scratch for it. 

'With these sentiments we passed down the village street and out toward 
our country home. Our head did not feel exactly right, and the street 
began to rock from side to side, so that it was uncertain to us which side of 
the street we were on. So we crossed over, but found ourself on the same 
side that we were on before we crossed over. Indeed we imagined that we 
were on both sides at the same time, and several fast teams driving between. 
We met another boy, who asked us why we looked so pale, and we told 
him we did not look pale, but that he was pale himself. 

BECFLECTS UNDER A BRIDaE. 

"We sat down under the bridge and began to reflect on the prospect 
of early decease, and on the uncertainty of all earthly expectations. We 
had determined to smoke the cigar all up and thus get the worth of our 
money, but were obliged to throw three-fourths of it away, yet knew just 
where we threw it, in case we felt better the next day. 

"Getting home, the old people were frightened, and demanded that we 
state what kept us so late and what was the matter with us. Not feeling 
that we were called on to go into particulars, and not wishing to increase 
our parents' apprehension that we were going to turn out badly, we summed 
up the case with the statement that we felt miserable at the pit of the 
stomach. We have mustard plasters administered, and careful watching for 
some hours, when we fell asleep and forgot our disappointment and humilia- 
tion in being obliged to throw away three-fourths of our first cigar. Being 
naturally reticent, we have never mentioned it until this time. 

"But how about our last cigar? It was three o'clock Sabbath morning 
in our Western home. We had smoked three or four cigars since tea. At 
that time we wrote our sermons and took another cigar with each new head 
of discourse. We thought we were getting the inspiration from above, but 



62 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



were getting much of it from beneath. Our hand trembled along the line; 
and strung up to the last tension of nerves, we finished our work and started 
from the room. A book standing on the table fell over; and although it was 
not a large book, its fall sounded to our excited system like the crack of a 
pistol. As we went down the stairs their creaking made our hair stand on 
end. As we flung ourselves on a sleepless pillow we resolved, God helpings 
that we had smoked our last cigar, and committed our last sin of night- 
study. 

"We kept our promise. With the same resolution we sent overboard 
cof¥ee and tea. That night we were born into a new physical, mental and 
moral life. Perhaps it may be better for some to smoke, and study nights, 
and take exciting temperance beverages; but we are persuaded that if 
thousands of people who now go moping, and nervous, and half exhausted 
through life, down with "sick headaches" and rasped of abstinence, they 
would thank God for this paragraph of personal experience, and make the 
world the same bright place we find it — a place so attractive that nothing 
short of heaven would be good enough to exchange for it. 

"The first cigar made us desperately sick; the throwing away of our last 
made us gloriously well. For us the croaking of the midnight owl hath 
ceased, and the time of the singing of birds has come." 

We have given the last cigar, as well as the first, because of the character- 
istic passage on the attractiveness of life. Being written out of his personal 
experience, Talmage's testimony against excessive smoking is much 
stronger than the diatribes of certain fair ones, who do not know what they 
are talking about. 

BOYS AND EASTER EGGS. 

There is one more personal passage which will serve to give the reader 
an intimate idea of "De Witt" as a boy. "Those who were so unfortunate," 
writes the country-boy, "as to have been born and brought up in the city 
know nothing about that chapter in a boy's history of which I speak. 

"About a month before Easter there comes to the farmhouse a scarcity of 
eggs. The farmer's wife begins to abuse the weasels and the cats as the 



EARLY LIFE OF T ALU AGE. 



63 



probable cause of the paucity. The feline tribe are assaulted v/ith many 
a harsh 'Scat!' on the suspicion of their fondness for omelets in the raw. 
Custards fail from the table. The Dominick hens are denounced as not 
worth their mush. Meanwhile the boys stand round the corner in a broad 
grin at what Ts the discomfiture of the rest of the family. 

"The truth must be told that the boys, in anticipation of Easter have, in 
some hole in the mow or some barrel in the wagon-house, been hiding eggs. 
If the youngsters understand their business they will compromise the matter, 
and see that at least a small supply goes to the house every day. Too 
great greed on the part of the boy will discover the whole plot, and the 
charge will be made: 'De Witt, I believe you are hiding the eggs!' Forth- 
with the boy is collared and compelled to disgorge his possessions. 

"Now, there is nothing more trying to a boy than, after great care in 
accumulating these shelly resources, to have to place them in a basket and 
bring them forth to the light two weeks before Easter. Boys, therefore, 
manage with skill and dexterity. At this season of the year you see them 
lurking much about the barrack and the hay-loft. You see them crawling 
out from stacks of straw and walking away rapidly with their hands behind 
them. They look very innocent, for I have noticed that the look of inno- 
cence in boys is proportioned to the amount of mischief with which they are 
stuffed. They seem to be determined to risk their lives on mow -poles where 
the hay lies thin. They come out from under the stable floor in a despicable 
state of toilet, and cannot give any excuse for their depreciation of apparel. 
Hens flutter off the nest with an unusual squawk, for the boys cannot wait 
any longer for the slow process of laying, and hens have no business to stand 
in the way of Easter. The most tedious hours of my boyhood were spent 
in waiting for a hen to get off her nest. "No use to scare her off, for then 
she will get mad, and ju§t as like as not take the egg with her. Indeed, I 
think the boy is excusable for his haste if his brother has a dozen eggs and 
he has only eleven. 

THE HENS ARE MEIiANCHOLY. 

"At this season of the year the hens are melancholy. They want to hatch, 
but how can they? They have the requisite disposition, and the capacity, 



64 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



and the feathers, and the nest, and everything but the eggs. With that 
deficit, they sometimes sit obstinately and defy the boy's approaches. Many 
a boy has felt the sharp bill of old Dominick strike the back of his hand, 
inflicting a wound that would have roused up the whole farmhouse to see 
what was the matter had it not been that the boy wanted to excite no sus- 
picion as to the nature of his expedition. Immediately over the hen's head 
comes the boy's cap, and there is a scatteration of feathers all over the hay- 
mow, and the boy is victor. 

"But at last the evening before Easter comes. While the old people are 
on the piazza the children come in with the accumulated treasures of many 
weeks, and put down the baskets. Eggs large and small, white-shelled and 
brown, Cochin-Chinas and Brahmaputras. The character of the hens is 
vindicated. The cat may now lie in the sun without being kicked by false 
suspicions. The surprised exclamation of parents more thian compensates 
the boys for the strategy of long concealment. The meanest thing in the 
world is for father and mother not to look surprised in such circumstances. 

"It sometimes happens that, in the agitation of bringing the eggs into 
the household harbor, the boy drops the hat or the basket and the whole 
enterprise is shipwrecked. From our own experience, it is very difficult to 
pick up eggs after you have once dropped them. You have found the same 
experience in after life. Your hens laid a whole nestful of golden eggs on 
Wall street. You had gathered them up. You were bringing them in. 
You expected a world of congratulations, but just the day before the con- 
summation, something adverse ran against you, and you dropped the basket, 
and the eggs broke. Wise man were you if, instead of sitting down to cry 
or attempting to gather up the spilled yolks, you built new nests and invited 
a new laying. 

"It is sometimes found on Easter morning, that the eggs have been kept 
too long. The boy's intentions were good enough, but the enterprise had 
been too protracted, and the casting out of the dozen was sudden and pre- 
cipitate. Indeed, that is the trouble with some older boys I wot of. They 
keep their money, or their brain, or their influence hidden till it rots — are 
unwilling to come forth day by day on a humble mission, doing what little 



EARLY LIFE OF T ALU AGE. 



65 



good they may, but are keeping themselves hidden till some great Easter- 
day of triumph, and then they will astonish the church and the world; but 
they find that faculties too long hidden are faculties ruined. Better for 
an egg to have succeeded in making one plain cake for a poor man's table 
than to have failed in making a banquet for the House of Lords. 

EGGS IN ALL THEIH GLORY. 

'That was a glad time when on Easter morning the eggs went into the 
saucepan, and came out striped, and spotted, and blue, and yellow, and the 
entire digestive capacity of the children was tested. You have never had 
anything so good to eat since. You found the eggs. You hid them. They 
were your contribution to the table. Since then you have seen eggs scram- 
bled, eggs poached, eggs in omelet, eggs boiled, eggs done on one side and 
eggs in a nog, but you shall never find anything like the flavor of that Easter 
morning in boyhood. 

"Alas for the boys in townf Easter comes to them on stilts, and they 
buy their eggs out of the store. There is no roorn for a boy to swing round. 
There is no good place in town to fly a kite, or trundle a hoop, or even shout 
without people's throwing up the window to see who is killed. The holi- 
days are robbed of half their life because some wiseacre will persist in telling 
him who Santa Claus is, while yet he is hanging up his first pair of stockings. 
Here the boy pays half a dollar for a bottle of perfume as big as his finger, 
when out of tow^n, for nothing but the trouble of breathing it, he may smell 
a country full of new-mown hay and wild honeysuckle. In a painted bath- 
tub he takes his Saturday bath, careful lest he hit his head against the spigot, 
while in the meadows-brook the boys plunge in wild glee, and pluck up 
health and long life from the pebbly bottom. Oh, the joy in the spring 
day, when, after long teasing of mother to let you take off your shoes, 
you dash out on the cool grass barefoot, or down the road, the dust curling 
about the instep in warm enjoyment, and, henceforth, for months, there 
shall be no shoes to tie or blacken. 

THE COUNTRY FOR THE BOYS. 

"Let us send the boys out into the country every year for an airing. If 
their grandfather and grandmother be yet alive, they will give them a good 



66 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE, 



time. They will learn in a little while the mysteries of the hay-mow, how 
to drive oxen and how to keep Easter. They will take the old people back 
to the time when you yourself were a boy. There will be for the grandson 
an extra cake in each oven. And grandfather and grandmother will sit and 
watch the prodigy, and wonder if any other family ever had such grand- 
children. It will be a good thing when the evenings are short, and the old 
folks' eyesight is somewhat dim, if you can set up in their house for a little 
while one or two of these lights of childhood. For the time the aches and 
pains of old age will be gone, and they will feel as lithe and merry as when 
sixty years ago they themselves rummaged barrack, and mow, and wagon- 
house, hiding eggs for Easter." 

THE AGE OP BOOTS. 

There is one more passage of his boyhood — the transition from babyhood 
to boyhood, he calls it — which Talmage has written of in a way that catches 
the very spirit of nine-year-olds. Unlike William Allen White's King of 
Boyville, this speech is autobiographical — it is strictly his personal experience, 
and yet we venture to say that Talmage is not inferior to White in faithful 
representation of the manners, ethics and mental processes of those strange 
inhabitants of earth w^ho live in a different world from us grown-ups. ''We 
have seen many days of joy," says he, "but we remember no such exhilarations 
as that felt by us on the day when we mounted our first pair of boots. To 
appreciate such an era in life, we must needs have been brought up in the 
country. Boys in town come to this crisis before they can appreciate the 
height and depth of such an acquisition. The boot period is the dividing line 
between babyhood and boyhood. Before the boots, one is trampled upon 
by comrades, and stuck with pins, and we walk with an air of apology for 
the fact that we were born at all. Robust school-fellows strike us across the 
cheek, and when we turn toward them, they cry, 'Who are you looking at?' 
or, what is worse than any possible insult, we have somebody chuck us under 
the chin, and call us 'Bub.' Before the crisis of boots the country boy carries 
no handkerchief. This keeps him in a state of constant humiliation. What- 
ever crisis may come in the boy's history— no handkerchief. This is the very 
unpopular period of snufifles. 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



67 



''But at last the age of boots dawns upon a boy. Henceforth, instead 
of always having to get out of the way, he will make others get out of his 
way. He will sometimes get the Scripture lesson confused, and when smitten 
on the right cheek will turn and give it to his opponent on the left cheek also. 
Indeed, we do not think there is any regulation, human or divine, demanding 
that a boy submit to the school-bully. I think we should teach our boy to 
avoid all quarrel and strife; but, nevertheless, to take care of himself. We 
remember with deep satisfaction how that, after Jim Johnson had knocked 
our hat in the mud, and spit in our face, and torn our new coat, we felt 
called upon to vindicate the majesty of our new boots. That, however, was 
before we had any idea of ever becoming a minister. But when the time 
spoken of in a boy's life comes, look out how you call him 'Bub.' He parts his 
hair on the side, has the end of his white handkerchief sticking out at the 
top of his side-pocket as if it were accidentally arranged so, has a dignified 
and manly mode of expectoration, and walks down the road with long strides, 
as much as to say : 'Clear the track for my boots !' 

SHOEMAKER THE KING OF MKN-. 

"We have seen imposing men, but none have so thoroughly impressed 
us as the shoemaker, who, with waxy hand, delivered into our possession our 
first pedal adornments. As he put the awl through the leather, and then 
inserted the two bristles into the hole, and drew them through it, and then, 
bending over the lapstone, grasped the threads with hard grip, and brought 
them up with a jerk that made the shop shake, we said to ourself : 'Here is 
gracefulness for you, and power!' 

"It was Sabbath-day when we broke them in. Oh! the rapture of that 
moment when we lay hold the straps at one end, and, with our big brother 
pushing at the other, the boot went on! We fear that we got but little 
advantage that day from the services. All the pulpit admonition about world- 
liness and pride struck the toe of our boots, and fell back. We trampled 
under our feet all good counsels. We have to repent that, while some trust 
in horses and some in chariots, we put too much stress upon leather. Though 
our purchase was so tight in the instep that, as soon as we got to the woods, 



68 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE, 



we went limping on our way — what boots it ? We felt that in such a causv it 
was noble to suffer. 

'Tor some reason, boots are not what they used to be. You pay a big price, 
and you might walk all day without hearing once from them ; but the original 
pair of which I tell spake out for themselves. No one doubted whether you 
had been to church after you had once walked up the aisle in company with 
such leather. It was the pure eloquence of calfskin. 

"We have seen hunting-boots, and fishing-boots, and jack-boots, Ameri- 
can boots, and French boots ; but we despair of finding anything to equal our 
first pair, which had the brightest gloss, the finest heels, and the merriest 
squeak. Alas! they are gone! And so is the artist who fashioned them. 
He has laid down his awl. Moons shall wax for him no more. He has done 
forever with pegs. But we shall always remember how he looked one Satur- 
day afternoon, when, the sunflowers in the yard, and the cat on the window- 
sill, he set upon his counter our first pair of boots. For his sake, may there 
be peace to all departed shoemakers! May they go straight to St. Crispin, 
that Roman artist in leather, remarkable for the fact that when he declared 
that a pair of shoes should be done by Saturday night, he always kept his 
promise." 

TALMAGE MAKES ONE I^VE HIM. 

There may be passages of Talmage's writings which sin against good 
taste, but we defy any man with any love in his heart to read about these 
boyhood boots and not love the man who wore and wrote about them. He 
catches not only the blitheness of boyhood, but he captures for his page or 
his talk that veil of tender melancholy through which we see the things of 
"yore ago." The impressions of boyhood remain with Talmage vividly and 
forever. He says somewhere that success or failure is not determined as 
people suppose, between twenty and thirty, but between t?en and twenty. 
This period of his own life was extraordinarily fertile in experience. He 
has written more about it, and from it he draws more material than from 
any other period of his life. His tastes were there forever fixed — he learned 
to love the plain, the simple, the natural, to dislike the artificial and the 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



69 



conventional. He learned to love the country better than the city — he who 
swayed the city multitudes as no other preacher ever did. 

See how he insists on the contrast : 'In these days," he says, "if a boy 
would go a-horsebacking, he must have gay caparison — saddle of the best 
leather, stirrups silvered, martingales bestarred, housing flamboyant, tasseled 
whip, jingling spurs, gauntleted hands, and crocodile boots able to swallow 
him to above the knee. 

THE BEST WAY TO BIDE. 

"But we are persuaded that is not the best way for a boy to ride. About 
seven o'clock in the morning, the farm-horses having had oats and currying, 
must be taken to the brook for the watering. The halter is caught into a 
half-hitch around the horse's nose, and, bringing him to the fence, the boy 
leaps astride. It is no rare occurrence that, in his avidity to get aboard, 
the boy slides off on the other side of the animal, and it is fortunate if the 
latter, taking advantage of the miscalculation, does not fly away with a wild 
snort, finding his way to the brook. 

"But once thoroughly mounted, the rope-halter is helm and sail sufli- 
cient. It is very easy to guide a thirsty horse when you want to take him to 
water. A poke of your bare feet into his ribs, and a strong pull of the rope, 
are enough to bring him back from any slight divergencies. Passing through 
the bars, all you have to do is to gather up your feet on his warm, smooth 
back, and, having passed the post, again drop anchor. Nothing looks more 
spirited or merry than a boy's feet bouncing against the sides of a glistening 
bay. The horse feels them, and the more briskly gallops down the lane. 

A BOY AND A THIRSTY HORSE, 

"At his first plunge into the brook, his sudden stop would have sent the 
boy somersaulting into the stream, but for a quick digging of the heels into 
the side, and a clutch of the scant lock of hair at the end of the mane. With 
lip and nostril in the stream, the horse cares nothing for what his young rider 
wills. There may be a clearer place below that the boy chooses for the water- 
ing, but the horse lifts not his head to the shout, or the jerk of halter, or 



70 , EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



stroke in the flanks. He wants to drink just there; intent upon that are mouth, 
and gullet, and fetlock, and spot in the face. Sitting astride the boy feels the 
jerk of each swallow, and sees the accompanying wag of the pony's ears. The 
horse lifts his head, takes a long breath, clashes his teeth, and, rinsing his 
jaws, drops the tuft of hay that lingered in his mouth, with right foot paws 
up the gravel from beneath, giving notice that he is ready, if you are, throws 
himself back on his hind feet till his front lift from the mud, gives a quick 
turn, and starts for the barn. In a minute he has made the length of the 
lane, and stands neighing for the barn-door to open. 

'This ride was the chief event of the day. Alas, if there are only two 
horses, when there are four boys! for two of them are disappointed, and 
keep their grudge for the most of the day. You linger about the barn for 
hours, and pat Pompey on the nose, and get astride his back in the stable, 
and imagine how it would be if it were only time to ride him down again. 

''We would like to have in our photograph-album a picture of the horses 
that in boyhood we rode to the watering. Sitting here, thinking of all the 
times they threw us off. The temptation was too great for them, and the 
mud where we fell was soft. The dear old pets ! One of them was sold, and 
as he was driven away we cried such large tears, and so many of them, that 
both coat-sleeves were insufficient to sop up the wretchedness. Another broke 
its leg, and it was taken to the woods and shot. We went into the house 
and held our ears, lest we should hear the cruel bang that announced the 
departure of our favorite sorrel. Another staid on the place, and was there 
when we left home. He was always driven slowly, had grown uncertain 
of foot, and ceased to prance at any sight or sound. You could no longer 
make him believe that a wheelbarrow was anything supernatural, nor startle 
him by shaking out a buffalo-skin. He had outlived all his contemporaries. 
Some had frisked out a frivolous life, and had passed away. Some had, after 
a life of kicking and balking, come to an ignominious end; but old Billy had 
lived on in an earnest way, and every Sunday morning stood at the door wait- 
ing for the family to get in the wagon and ride to church. Then he would 
jog along seriously, as if conscious that his church privileges would soon 
be gone. In the long line of tied horses beside the church, he would stand 



EARLY LIFE OF TALMAGE. 



71 



and listen to the songs inside. While others stamped, and beat the flies, and 
got their feet over the shafts, and slipped the halter, and bit the nag on the 
other side of the tongue, Billy had more regard for the day and place, and 
stood silent, meditative, and decorous. If there be any better place than 
this world for good horses, Billy has gone there. He never bolted ; he never 
kicked. In plowing, he never put his foot over the trace; he never balked; 
he never put back his ears and squealed. A good, kind, faithful, honest, indus- 
trious horse was he. He gave us more joy than any ten-thousand-dollar 
courser could give us now. No arched stallion careering on Central Park, or 
foam-dashed Long Island racer, could thrill us like the memory of that family 
roadster. 

PITY FOB BOYS TN TOWNS. 

*'Alas, for boys in the city, who never ride a horse to brook! An after- 
noon airing in ruffles, stiff and starched, and behind a costumed driver, cannot 
make up for this early disadvantage. The best way to start life is astride a 
farm-horse, with a rope-halter. In that way you learn to rough it. You are 
prepared for hard bounces on the road of life; you learn to hold on; you get 
the habit of depending on your own heels, and not upon other people's stir- 
rups; you find how to climb on without anybody to give you a boost. It 
does not hurt you so much when you fall off. And some day, far on in life, 
when you are in the midst of the hot and dusty city, and you are weary with 
the rush and din of the world, in your imagination you call back one of these 
nags of pleasant memory. You bring him up by the side of your study, or 
counting-room table, and from that you jump on, and away you canter through 
the old-time orchard, and by the old-time meeting-house, or down the lane 
in front of the barn, dashing into the cool, sparkling water of the meadow, 
where he stops to take his morning dram; or you hitch him up to the rock- 
ing-chair in which you have for twenty years sat rheumatic and helpless, and 
he drags you back some Sunday morning to the old country church, where 
many years ago he stood tied to the post, while you, with father and mother 
at either end of the pew, was learning of the land where there is no pain, and 
into which John looked, and said : 'I saw a white horse.' " 



72 



EARLY LIFE OF T ALU AGE. 



We quote what Talmage has to say concerning the efficacy of family 
prayers, for, in the following chapter, the prayers of his parents are shown 
to have had an all-important influence on his life. 

"No child ever gets over having heard parents pray for him. I had 
many sound thrashings when I was a boy (not as many as I ought to have 
had, for I was the last child and my parents let me off), but the most memo- 
rable scene in my childhood was father and mother at morning and evening 
prayers. I cannot forget it, for I used often to be squirming around on 
the floor and looking at them while they were praying. Your son may go 
to the ends of the earth, and run through the whole catalogue of transgres- 
sion, but he will remember the family altar, and it will be a check and a call, 
and perhaps his redemption." 

We close the chapter of boyhood with this honest and likable confession 
of De Witt, that though thrashed, he wasn't thrashed as much as he should 
have been, and with that important picture of the family altar which made 
the early home of Talmage "a church within a church." 



CHAPTER IV. 



YOUTH AND EDUCATION. 

GRADUATED AT UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK IN 1 853 SPEECH AT NIBLO's GAR- 
DEN HAD BECOME A CHRISTIAN THREE YEARS BEFORE IDEA OF STUDY- 
ING LAW PARENTAL PRAYERS THAT HE MIGHT" ENTER THE MINISTRY 

■ — ENTERS NEW BRUNSWICK THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY GRADUATED AND 

ORDAINED IN 1 856. 

It seemed a matter of course to his parents that De Witt, as they called him 
at home, would follow his three brothers into the ministry. They never 
doubted that he would, but they left the vindication of their belief to the hand 
of Providence working through the years. They were not disappointed in 
their hope, though the earlier preferences and longings of their son seemed 
to tend in quite another direction. From boyhood and throughout his youth 
always inclining toward a professional career, he purposed to make that pro- 
fession the law. Not ignoring that manifestation, nor abating a jot of their 
own desire for and confidence in a contrary result, De Witt's parents, as a 
first requisite to his success in any calling, determined to endow him with 
the ever-available, indispensable capital of a thorough education. His obser- 
vation kept pace with his acquisition, and his bodily vigor, always phenome- 
nal, kept pace with both. He was a marvel of eccentricities from childhood. 
We might fill out our pages with the first indications and demonstrations 
which were in little the promise of distinction and great power for good after- 
wards. It is enough to say that early in his studies he was remarkable for 
enthusiasm in mental labor; for an audacious devotion to those branches of 
it for which he felt the most fondness and fitness ; for a vocabulary of extreme 
simplicity, directness and brevity; for powers of memory and description of 
the highest order; for a habit of divining his way to right conclusions, with- 
out the tardy processes of proof ; for a tendency to reach the heart through 
illustrations, rather than to harrow the head with arguments; for an entire 

73 



74 



YOUTH AND EDUCATION, 



absence of self-consciousness; for a disposition of sweetness and light; and 
for ideal honorableness. ' 

He was a merry lad withal, and a mischievous and full of fun, as the 
autobiographical passages relating to his boyhood amply show. Constitution- 
ally restive under shams, dullness and stupid precedents, active in the field 
and in sports, developing his robust, big frame, in which he has such joy and 
pride, roguish in school and church, there was absolutely nothing of the prig 
about him. 

Prepared by the usual course of study for college, Mr. Talmage chose for 
his alma mater the University of New York, and passed through the institu- 
tion without that maximum of merit which mark men who are the chief fig- 
ures on examination days and ciphers ever afterwards. His tropical imagi- 
nation, the confidential relationship established between himself and human 
nature, his prodigious but simple powers of expression, his possession of the 
dramatic in high degree in thought and manner, and his inherent love of the 
pure in morals, and for the ideally excellent in life, rendered him the distin- 
guishing expectation and feature of class and composition days. As a helle- 
lettres scholar, a professor of the university tells us that Talmage had no 
equal in all the students who were ever graduated from that institution. On 
graduation day in 1853, when he delivered his speech at Niblo's Garden, the 
effect was electric and overwhelming; the most part of the audience rising 
to their feet, under the spell of his brilliant, original, mirthful and pathetic 
utterances. A great future was then confidently predicted for Tom Talmage, 
and his friends believed that his career would be legal. Journalist, lawyer, 
politician or reformer he might become, and to any of these roles his powers 
were signally adapted. 

He might also have filled a prominent place in the theatrical annals of the 
country, because there was a dramatic element about his pulpit work which 
made his sermons strikingly effective, but after graduating from the Univer- 
sity of the City of New York and studying at law for a year he entered upon 
the study of theology at the earnest solicitation of his parents, and, as they 
believed, in answer to their prayers. What efiicacy they and he attached to 
prayer we see in the following story told by himself : 



YOUTH AND EDU CATION. 



75 



"My grandmother was a praying woman. My father's name Vs^as David. 
One day he and other members of the family started for a gay party. Grand- 
mother said: 'Go, David, and enjoy yourself; but all the time you and your 
brothers and sisters are there I will be praying for you.' They went, but did 
not have a very good time, knowing that their mother was praying for them. 

"The next morning grandmother heard loud weeping in the room below. 
She went down and found her daughter crying violently. What was the mat- 
ter ? She was in anxiety about her soul — an anxiety that found no relief short 
of the cross. Word came that David was at the barn in great agony. Grand- 
mother went and found him on the barn floor, praying for the life of his soul. 

"The news spread to the neighboring houses, and other parents became 
anxious about their children, and the influence spread to the village of Somer- 
ville, and there was a great turning unto God ; and over two hundred souls, 
in one day, stood up in the village church to profess faith in Christ. And 
it all started from my grandmother's prayer for her sons and daughters !" 

At the age of eighteen De Witt Talmage became a Christian, but not until 
he was twenty-one was the purpose of the Deity made manifest to him in a 
manifestation which carried him, like three of his brothers before him, into 
the ministry. He met his duty and destiny not without phenomenal struggle, 
and not without tragical battles against doubts, ambition, temptation and a 
great self-distrustfulness. Clergymen say that the devil has always waged 
most intense war with the Lord for his crown-jewels, and wages it never so 
violently (or vainly) as at the moment those jewels receive the setting of 
grace. With the turning of the tide of Talmage's life came the mortification 
and regret of time lost, and the vitalest consciousness of the imperative obliga- 
tions to redeem the time that remained. He prepared himself for the ministry 
at the New Brunswick Theological Seminary. Here he discarded and neg- 
lected no modern appliance technically taught of preaching as an art, and 
from the first exhibited many of the attributes of mind and heart which have 
since given him world-wide celebrity. Of life in the seminary, in connection 
with the subject of the physical weakness of ministers, Talmage writes as 
follows : 

"The damage begins in the college boarding-house. The theological stu- 



YOUTH AND EDUCATION. 



dent has generally small means, and he must go to a cheap boarding-house. 
A frail piece of sausage trying to swim across a river of gravy on the break- 
fast plate, but drowned at last, 'the linked sweetness long drawn out' of flies 
in the molasses cup, the gristle of a tough ox, and measly biscuit, and buck- 
wheat cakes tough as the cook's apron, and old peas in which the bugs lost 
their life before they had time to escape from the saucepan, and stale cucum- 
bers cut up into small slices of cholera morbus — are the provender out of 
which we are trying at Princeton and Yale and New Brunswick to make sons 
of thunder. Sons of mush! From such depletion we step gasping into the 
pulpit and look so heavenly pale that the mothers in Israel are afraid we will 
evaporate before we get through our first sermon. 

MABTYEDOM OF DIVINITY STUDENTS. 

"Many of our best young men in preparation for the ministry are going 
through this martyrdom. The strongest mind in our theological class per- 
ished, the doctors said afterward, from lack of food. The only time he could 
aifford a doctor was for his post-mortem examination." 

That Talmage himself, however, managed somehow to thrive physically 
on such a regimen is proved by the great health and strength that was all his 
life of such service to him. One of the traditions of Herzog Hall Theological 
Seminary, in New Brunswick, where he graduated, runs like this : 

"Talmage was an ungainly youngster, full of originality as an egg is of 
meat, but he did not commend himself to the professors of the seminary as a 
budding clergyman. After he had preached his first sermon there, good old 
Dr. De Witt, the president, thought the time had come to have a serious talk 
with the young man. He took him away where no one else could listen to their 
colloquy and said: 

" 'Mr. Talmage, I never like to discourage anybody, and I rarely say what 
I am going to say to ^vou. You are intellectually bright enough. I can easily 
imagine that you might make a success in almost any field of life except in 
preaching the gospel. But, frankly, and in all kindness, I must tell you that 
I solemnly think you have mistaken your calling. Get a position selling goods 
behind a dry goods counter or take a clerkship in a law office, or, if necessary, 



YOUTH AND EDUCATION. 



follow the plow, but do not think of becoming the pastor of a church. You 
are not fitted for it at all. It is a great mistake for you to waste your time.' 

'Talmage simply insisted that he would go on and graduate. He did. 
And before his pulpit career was ended he had preached to hundreds where 
the venerable Dr. De Witt had preached to one. But those who tell the story 
down in New Brunswick say that Dr. De Witt never changed his mind. He 
was not in the habit of changing his mind." Immediately after graduation 
Talmage received a call to the village of Belleville, New Jersey, was there 
ordained as pastor in 1856, and entered upon the first of the three ministries 
which prepared him for the great and crowning work he was to do at last in 
Brooklyn. 



CHAPTER V. 



PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 

FIRST PASTORATE, BELLEVILLE, NEW JERSEY, 1 856 PREACHING IN SYRACUSE, 

1 859- 1 862 GROWING FAMOUS IN PHILADELPHIA, 1 862- 1 869 CHAP- 
LAIN OF A PENNSYLVANIA REGIMENT TALMAGe's EARLY HORROR OF 

EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEAKING HIS OWN STORY OF HIS FIRST EXTEM- 
PORANEOUS SERMON SAVED BY THE GOING OUT OF THE GAS. 

We trace Mr. Talmage through what we are bound to consider three not 
unimportant but preparatory ministries. For three years at Belleville, New 
Jersey ; for three at Syracuse, in New York ; for seven in Philadelphia, Mr. 
Talmage labored to the great profit and prosperity of congregations, and to 
the gradual and increasing knowledge of what work, when God should open 
to him the opportunity, it was in his power best to accomplish. Those charges, 
in historical order and sequence, are to be considered as merely incidental and 
educational. They obviously laid the foundation for, and paved the path to, 
his later and greater work. Yet they were prolific of memorable successes 
and lessons. 

At Belleville it is right to record that Mr. Talmage broke the ice of preach- 
ing, and first tasted of the sweetness of commending Christ to men. He there 
found out a commonplace, but not always observed fact, that the way to 
preach is just to preach. Not to write treatises, not to declaim, not to strike 
a balance between the sins it is safe to denounce and those it is politic to 
ignore. That cultivated country congregation was an admirable school. Not 
unlikely the pew taught the pulpit in ways the former wot not of. It was 
there that young Talmage not only ''became introduced to himself," but it was 
also there that he bid at the start "a last farewell" to every resolution, except 
to count himself as dirt and accursed if he knew any thing among them save 
Christ and Him crucified. Preaching in itself was the task there taught him. 
City preaching was the talent he made into five at Syracuse. Metropolitan 

.78 



PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 



TO 



preaching — to other preaching what sunHght is to moonlight — was the talent 
he made into ten in Philadelphia, where he received more than his own in the 
usury of souls. In each of the churches antecedent likenesses of fact obtained. 
They had all enjoyed an experience of delightful, and decorous, and audience- 
diminishing dullness. They slept as Peter on the housetop, and dared to 
dream that the four-cornered sheets of opportunity let down to them from 
heaven contained that which was common and unclean. It was not a rest 
but a revolution they reaped in young Mr. Talmage. He developed their 
spiritual energies so thoroughly that they were at first shocked, and then fired 
to mighty zeal by glorious revivals. Conversions ceased to be anomalous. 
Communions no longer placidly passed without disturbance from an awaken- 
ing world demanding a seat, by right of repentance and universal promise 
and invitation, at the table. These congregations normally followed on one 
another. Syracuse was a larger Belleville, and Philadelphia was a greatly 
amplified Syracuse. By that fate which waits on power, and compels it to be 
first at the front, and makes its seat, whenever taken, the head of the table, 
the Rev. Talmage placed the churches he ministered to in the van of energy 
and achievement. Prosperity, through that religious democracy which was 
in his blood and training, periodical increase in numbers, and the development 
of each member into a thorough worker, were the results he effected and the 
legacies he left among those parishes that prepared him for and presented 
him to his greatest one. We are able to give the readers of this biography 
a detailed account of the first extemporaneous sermon Talmage preached at 
Belleville. It is written by no less a personage than the great preacher him- 
self. ''We entered the ministry," writes he, "with a mortal horror of extem- 
poraneous speaking. Each week we wrote two sermons and a lecture all out, 
from the text to the amen. We did not dare to give out the notice of a 
prayer-meeting unless it was on paper. We were a slave to manuscript, and 
the chains were galling; and three months more of such work would have 
put us in the graveyard. We resolved on emancipation. The Sunday night 
was approaching when we expected to make violent rebellion against this 
bondage of pen and paper. We had an essay about ten minutes long on some 
Christian subject, which we proposed to preach as an introduction to the 



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PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 



sermon, resolved, at the close of that brief composition, to launch out on the 
great sea of extemporaneousness. 

"It happened that the coming Sabbath night was to be eventful in the 
village. The trustees of the church had been building a gasometer back of 
the church, and the night I speak of the building was for the first time to be 
lighted in the modern way. The church was, of course, crowded — not so 
much to hear the preacher as to see how the gas would burn. Many were 
unbelieving, and said that there would be an explosion, or a big fire, or that 
in the midst of the service the lights would go out. Several brethren disposed 
to hang on to old customs declared that candles and oil were the only fit 
material for lighting a church, and they denounced the innovation as indicative 
of vanity on the part of the new-comers. They used oil in the ancient temple, 
and it was that which ran down on Aron's beard, and anything that was good 
enough for the whiskers of an old-time priest was good enough for a country 
meeting-house. These sticklers for the oil were present that night, hoping — • 
and I think some of them secretly praying — that the gas might go out. 

"With our ten-minute manuscript we went into the pulpit, all in a tremor. 
Although the gas did not burn as brightly as its friends had hoped, still it 
was bright enough to show the people the perspiration that stood in beads on 
our forehead. We began our discourse, and every sentence gave us the feeling 
that we were one step nearer the gallows. We spoke slowly, so as to make 
the ten-minute notes last fifteen minutes. During the preachment of the brief 
manuscript we concluded that we had never been called to the ministry. We 
were in a hot-bath of excitement. People noticed our trepidation, and sup- 
posed it was because we were afraid the gas would go out. Alas ! our fear 
was that it would not go out. As we came toward the close of our brief we 
joined the anti-gas party, and prayed that before we came to the last written 
line something would burst, and leave us in the darkness. Indeed, we discov- 
ered an encouraging flicker amid the burners, which gave us the hope that 
the brief which lay before us would be long enough for all practical purposes, 
and that the hour of execution might be postponed to some other night. As 
we came to the sentence next to the last the lights fell down to half their size, 
and we could just manage to see the audience as they were floating away from 



PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 



81 



our vision. We said to ourselves, 'Why can't these lights be obliging, and 
go out entirely?' The wish was gratified. As we finished the last line of our 
brief, and stood on the verge of rhetorical destruction, the last glimmer of 
light was extinguished. 'It is impossible to proceed,' we cried out ; 'receive 
the benediction !' 

"We crawled down the pulpit in a state of exhilaration ; we never before 
saw such handsome darkness. The odor of the escaping gas was to us like 
'gales from Araby,' Did a frightened young man ever have such a fortunate 
deliverance? The providence was probably intended to humble the trustees, 
yet the scared preacher took advantage of it. 

"But after we got home we saw the wickedness of being in such dread. 
As the Lord got us out of that predicament we resolved never again to be 
cornered in one similar. Forthwith the thralldom was broken, we hope never 
again to be felt. How demeaning that a man with a message from the Lord 
Almighty should be dependent upon paper-mills and gasometers ! Paper is a 
non-conductor of gospel electricity. If a man have a five-thousand-dollar 
bill of goods to sell a customer he does not go up to the purchaser and say, 
'I have some remarks to make you about these goods, but just wait till I get 
out my manuscript.' Before he got through reading the argument the cus- 
tomer would be in the next door, making purchases from another house. 

"What cowardice! Because a few critical hearers sit with lead-pencils out 
to mark down the inaccuracies of extemporaneousness shall the pulpit cower ? 
If these critics do not repent they will go to hell, and take their lead-pencils 
with them. While the great congregation are ready to take the bread hot out 
of the oven shall the minister be crippled in his work because the village doctor 
or lawyer sits carping before him? To please a few learned ninnies a thou- 
sand ministers sit writing sermons on Saturday night till near the break of 
day, their head hot, their feet cold, and their nerves atwitch. Sermons born on 
Saturday night are apt to have the rickets. Instead of cramping our chests 
over writing-desks, and being the slaves of the pen, let us attend to our 
physical health, that we may have more pulpit independence. It would be a 
grand thing if every minister felt strong enough in body to thrash any man 
in his audience improperly behaving, but always kept back from such assault 



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PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 



by the fact that it would be wrong to do so. There is a good deal of heart 
and head in our theology, but not enough liver and backbone. We need a 
more stalwart Christian character, more roast beef rare, and less calf's-foot 
jelly. This will make the pulpit more bold and the pew more manly. 

REVISITS HOME OF YOUTH. 

"Which thoughts came to us this week as we visited again the village 
church aforesaid, and preached out of the same old Bible in which, years ago, 
we laid the ten-minute manuscript, and we looked upon the same lights that 
oiace behaved so badly. But we found it had been snowing since the time we 
lived there, and heads that then were black are white now, and some of the 
eyes which looked up to us that memorable night when the gasometer failed 
us, thirteen years ago, are closed now, and for them all earthly lights have 
gone out forever." 

In another passage Talmage insists still more strongly upon the need of 
physical development among the clergy, quoting Leviticus, xx:22, ''Blind, 
or broken, or maimed, or having a wen, or scurvy, or scabbed, ye shall not 
offer these unto the Lord," he says "the Bible clergy had muscle as well as 
grace. David was little, but too much for Goliath, and grand on a bear- 
hunt. People talk of Paul as though he were a skeleton because he had a 
'thorn in the flesh,' but he was no skeleton. He rode horseback, and gradu- 
ated from the saddle into the ministry. He did not fall from his horse 
because he was not a good rider. From a joyful view he took of almost 
everything, I know nothing ailed his liver. From the courageous way he 
stood before Felix, I know nothing was the matter with his backbone. At 
sixty-eight years of age he made a journey of more than fifteen hundred miles, 
before 'palace cars' were invented, and still had enough strength left to write 
in a dungeon the Second Epistle to Timothy. How much skeleton was there 
about that? The ministry of 1892 will be strong, robust, agile, and stalwart. 
Before the lamb and the lion lie down together there will have to be some 
fighting done, and I want our side to win." 

VIRTUES OF A GOOD FIGHTER. 

Furthermore, he rather liked the fight. His view of ministerial dignity 
was always so divergent from that of the old line, black robed divines of the 



PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 



83 



Reformed Dutch Church that it was a matter of surprise to many of his friends 
that he chose that communion at the start of his career. His first three 
ministries, however, were in this denomination, the change to Presbyterian- 
ism coming only when he went to Brooklyn. There his church, though per- 
fectly evangelical in doctrine and spirit, was Talmagean rather than Presby- 
terian. His character was so sharply individual that had he cared to do it 
he could have created, as Knox or Wesley did, a new denomination. Talmage 
was not, of course, a great thinker or delver after new philosophic truth. His 
disagreements w4th the Presbyterian Synod in the days of his power were not 
caused by his theological views and opinions becoming too liberal. Talmage 
never showed that he thought much about theology. He worked with and 
upon emotions, not thoughts. The synod disapproved of his startling meth- 
ods of working upon emotions. 

In the period of the preparatory ministries he had already begun to develop 
that style which was afterwards so widely branded as sensational. When 
asked what he thought ''about all this talk of sensationalism in the pulpit," he 
says, or rather makes his character Scattergood say, "As far as I can under- 
stand, it seems to be a war between stagnation and sensationalism, and I dis- 
like both. 

SUCCESS or SENSATIONALISM. 

^'I do not know which word is the worst. It is the national habit in litera- 
ture and religion to call that sensationalism which we ourselves cannot do. 
If an author write a book that will not sell, he is apt to charge the books of 
the day which do succeed as being sensational. There are a great many men 
who, in the world and the church, are dead failures, who spend their time 
in letting the public know that they are not sensationalists. The fact is that 
they never made any stir while living, nor will they in dying, save as they 
rob the undertaker of his fees, they not leaving enough to pay their dismis- 
sion expenses. 

'T hate sensationalism in the pulpit so far as that word means the preach- 
ing of anything but the Gospel, but the simple fact is that whenever and 
wherever faith and repentance and heaven and hell are proclaimed with 



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PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 



emphasis there will be a sensation. The people in our great cities are hungry 
for the old Gospel of Christ. If our young men in the ministry want large 
audiences, let them quit philosophizing, and hair-splitting, and botanizing, 
and without gloves take hold of men's sins and troubles, and there will be no 
lack of hearers. Stagnation is worse than sensationalism. 

THE MUD TURTLE AND THE HOUSE. 

have always noticed that just in proportion as a man cannot get along 
himself he is fearful of some one else making an excitement. Last week a 
mud-turtle down by the brook opened its shell and discoursed to a horse that 
was coming down to drink. The mud-turtle said to the horse: 'J^st as I 
get sound asleep you are sure to come past and wake me up. We always used 
to have a good, quiet time down here in the swamp till you got in the habit 
of thumping along this way. I have been pastor of thirteen other mud-tur- 
tles, and we always had peace till you came, and next week, at our semi- 
annual meeting of mud-turtles, we shall either have you voted a nuisance or 
will talk it over in private, eight or ten of us, which will probably be the 
more prudent way.' Then the mud- turtle's shell went shut with a snap, at 
v^^hich the horse kicked up his heels as he turned to go up to the barn to be 
harnessed to a load of corn that was ready for the market." 

The wizard wand of skillful statement has, in this utterance, transformed 
the opponents of ''sensationalism" into stagnating mud- turtles, and the sen- 
sationalist himself into a powerful and useful worker. Into such a worker 
Talmage was transforming himself not only in Philadelphia and Syracuse, 
where the accusation of sensationalism first arose, but in the quiet Belleville 
days whose atmosphere he makes us breathe with him in the following vig- 
nette: ''A country meeting-house. A mid-summer Sabbath. The air lazy 
and warm. The grave-yard around about oppressively still, the white slabs 
here and there shining in the light like the drifted snows of death, and not a 
grass-blade rustling as though a sleeper had stirred in his dream. 

"Clap-boards of the church weather-beaten, and very much bored, either 
by bumble-bees, or long sermons, probably the former." 

Everywhere the same ridicule of dullness, stagnation, boredom! What 



PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 



85 



a mighty weapon most preachers have thrown away by discarding and ban- 
ning human laughter from their somnolent discourses. This pastor in 
quiet Belleville, on the contrary, was armed with power over men's smiles 
and tears. 

Not least important in his preparation for his life-work was the country 
health he there acquired. Of his farming he writes with full comprehension 
ot the robust vigor it gave him. His parishioners were inclined to make a 
little fun of him, asking, ''How did the cabbages turn out?" with twinkling 
of eye and twitching of laughter in mouth-corners. In answering the ques- 
tion, "Does clerical farming pay ?" Talmage answered that he found no fatal 
repulsion between pen and hoe. "Can one who is shepherd of a city flock 
keep Southdowns from getting the hoof-rot?" was the query. "How much 
out of pocket at the end of the year?" 

EXCITEMENT OF OLEBICAL FABMING. 

"Clerical farming does pay," answers Talmage. "Notwithstanding a 
weasel invaded the poultry-yard, and here and there a chicken died of the 
'gaps,' and one of the frosts saved us a great deal of trouble picking peaches, 
and one day, in the process of making butter, 'soda ash' was taken for salt, 
and the caterpillars of our neighborhood were very fond of celery, and the 
drinking of milk without any chalk at first made us all sick — the shock too 
sudden for the constitution — still we feel that we made our fortune last 
summer. With a long-handled hoe we turned up more than our neighbors 
dreamed of. Though a few hundred dollars out of pocket (a fact we never 
acknowledged to agricultural infidels), we were physically born again. We 
have walked stronger ever since, for our walk last summer in the furrow. 
Our hay-pitching was an anodyne that has given us sound sleep all winter. 
On our new grindstone we sharpened our appetite, and have since been able 
to cut through anything set before us. We went out in the spring feeling that 
the world was going to ruin; we came back in the autumn persuaded that 
we were on the eve of the millennium. 

"Like all other beginners, our first attempt at buying a horse resulted 
in our getting bitten, not by the horse. From Job's vivid description we went 



86 



PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 



forth to look for a horse whose 'neck was clothed with thunder.' We found 
him. We liked the thunder very well, but not so well the lightning that flew 
out of his feet the first time he kicked the dash-board to pieces. -. We give as 
our experience that thunder is most too lively to plough with. We found 
him dishonest at both ends. Not only were his heels untrustworthy, but his 
teeth, and the only reason we escaped being bitten by the horse, as well 
as the jockey who sold him, was that we are gifted with powers of locomo- 
tion sufficient for any emergency, especially if there be sufficient propulsion 
advancing from the rear. Job shall never choose another horse for us. We 
telegraphed to the jockey, 'Come and take your old nag, or I will sue you !' 
He did not budge, for he was used to being sued. Having changed our 
mind, we telegraphed, offering to pay him for the honor of swindling us, 
and the telegram was successful. We gave him a withering look as he rode 
away, but he did not observe it. 

THE MEEK-EYED COW. 

"Our first cow was more successful. She has furnished the cream of a 
good many jokes to our witty visitors, and stands, I warrant, this cold day, 
chewing her cud like a philosopher — the calmness of the blue sky in her eyes, 
and the breath of last summer's pasture-field sweeping from her nostrils. 
Gentle thing! When the city boys came out, and played 'catch,' running 
under her, or afterward standing on both sides, four boys milking at once, 
she dissented not. May she never want for stalks or slops ! 

"We were largely successful with one of our two pigs. Our taste may 
not be thoroughly cultured, but we think a pig of six weeks is positively 
handsome. It has such an innocent look out of its eyes, and a voice so capa- 
ble of nice shades of inflection, whether expressive of alarm or want. Such 
a cunning wink of the nose, such artistic twist of tail ! But one of the twain 
fell to acting queer one day. It went about, as if, like its ancestors of 
Gadara, unhappily actuated, till after a while it up and died. We had a 
farrier to doctor it, and poor thing! it was bled, and mauled, till we knew 
not whether to ascribe its demise to the disease or the malpractice of the 
medical adviser. But its companion flourished. We had clergymen, law- 



PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 



87 



yers, and artists admire and praise it. We found recreation in looking at 
its advancement, and though the proverb says that you 'cannot make a whistle 
out of a pig's tail,' figuratively speaking, I have made a dozen out of that 
mobile and unpromising material. 

THE GOOSE A MALIGNED BIRD. 

''Our geese flourished. ]\Iuch-maligned birds ! They are wise instead of 
foolish, save in the one item of not knowing how to lower their necks when 
you want them to go under the fence. (Who of us has not one weak point 
of character?) They are affectionate, and die if shut up alone, and with 
wild outcry sympathize with any unfortunate comrade whose feathers have 
been plucked. From their wings they furnished the instrument for writing 
Walter Scott's 'Rob Roy,' and Thomas Carlyle's 'Sartor Resartus.' Worth 
more than an eagle any day, have better morals, do pluck more nutriment out 
of the mud than eagles do out of the sun. Save for Fourth of July orations 
eagles are of but little worth, filthy, cruel, ugly at the beak, fierce at the eye, 
loathsome at the claw ; but give me a flock of geese, white-breasted, yellow- 
billed, coming up at night-fall with military tramp, in single file led on, till 
Hearing the barn-yard they take wing, and with deafening clang the flying 
artillery wheel to their bivouacs for the night. 

"Yes, clerical farming does pay. Out on the place we won the medal 
every day for pictures hung with fire-loops in the sky-gallery; and for ma- 
chinery by which the sun drew water, and the trees pumped up the juices, 
and the shower and sunshine wove carpets better than the Axminster for 
Brindle and Durham to walk on. 

LOVE NATURE FIRST. 

"If a city clerg}^man have no higher idea than a crop of turnips or corn, 
he had better not take a farm. It will be cheaper to let somebody else's hen 
lay the eggs, and to buy your tomatoes by the peck. But he who would like 
to look out of his window and see 'rain on the new-mown grass,' and at five 
o'clock would love to walk out and see 'the day-spring from on high,' or in 
the garden hear Christ preaching from the text, 'Consider the lilies,' or watch 



88 



PREPARATORY MINISTRIES. 



God feeding the ravens, or see Him clothing 'the grass of the field/ or in the 
gush of full moonlight learn the sweetness of the promise, 'At evening tide it 
shall be light, — let such a minister get a place in country and spend the weeks 
that he has usually passed among the bright shawls of starched watering- 
places, with his coat off, in check shirt, and coarse boots, listening while 
'mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creep- 
ing things, and flying fowl,' at matins and vespers praise the Lord; geranium 
and branch of apple-blossom swinging their censers." 

How real and personal this man succeeds in making himself! From the 
coarse boots and check shirt-sleeves of the outer man to that arcana of his 
soul where he conceived the poet's thought that "flowers are the dividing line 
between the physical and the spiritual" we know this. man! He has showed 
us himself; he himself is his own great biographer. 



CHAPTER VI. 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 

TALMAGE CALLED TO CHICAGO, SAN FRANCISCO AND BROOKLYN THE CENTRAL 

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF BROOKLYN APPARENTLY THE LEAST ATTRACT- 
IVE POSSIBILITY OF A FREE CHURCH DECIDES TALMAGE IN FAVOR OF 

BROOKLYN HIS SERMON ON THE FREE CHURCH. 

Baxter will always recall Kidderminster; Knox and Chalmers, Edin- 
burgh; M'Cheyne, Dundee. Similarly with Dr. Talmage's life-work will 
Brooklyn be always associated. There he found his real field — field which 
as thoroughly fitted him as he it, field which exactly answered his faculties, 
and which exactly neutralized the local lets he had elsewhere perforce 
suffered. The Free Tabernacle, and the Lay College, are now historic 
institutions in Christendom, and the name of T. De Witt Talmage will 
always be considered whenever and wherever these are referred to. He the 
cause; they the effects. The story of the beginning and progress of all three 
in the City of Churches is a story, in the telling of which facts, however 
simply narrated, well nigh as thoroughly transcend credibility as they sur- 
pass precedent. The order of time will be found the order of circumstance 
in the case. 

While preaching to enormous congregations in Philadelphia, and while 
apparently settled and provided for as to all his future, Mr. Talmage was 
disturbed by, and quite put in a strait betwixt, three calls. Had he been 
born with a call, as the darkies say, his situation could not have been more 
unpleasant. He was wanted in Chicago, San Francisco, and Brooklyn. 
He was in Philadelphia, and most profoundly admired, and indulged the 
single aspiration of the defunct Confederacy; all he asked was to be let 
alone. As agreeable a church sustained by as faithful and congenial a 
people, in as pleasant a city as any under the sun, held him with hooks of 
steel and ties of love. Interest, duty, and future seemed to concur to hold 

89 



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CALLED TO BROOKLYN r 



him there. Chicago and San Francisco bid and bragged against one 
another by mail, and telegraph, and delegation. Brooklyn pleaded with 
stricken rather than beaming coimtenance, and urged what be could do for 
her far more than what she could do for him. Her promise was couched 
in the simple statement: "She would do what she could." The Central 
Presbyterian Church, then halting between the alternative of total dissolu- 
tion or gradual disintegration, between quick suicide and slow consumption, 
almost despairingly, and with almost inexcusable sauciness, resolved to try 
to live, to try to grow. One thing in Philadelphia the soul of Mr. Talmage 
had desired and could not obtain. He wanted his church to be as free as 
the salvation he preached. For reasons related to the habits of the society, 
and the fees in some pews, that aspiration could not.be reaUzed. Neither 
did Chicago nor San Francisco in their offers hold out any chance for a 
free church at once. On that point Mr. Talmage informed himself by quiet 
inquiry. The same course revealed to him that in Brooklyn no obstacles 
lay in the way of his desire, always assuming that he could persuade the 
people, after coming, to essay and fairly test the experiment. This one 
possibility of a free church in a short time, more than anything else, induced 
the doctor to accept the call to what was then the Central Presbyterian 
Church. The call was unanimous, but it was not overwhelmingly formid- 
able. Nineteen members — all the voting force of the church — occupied 
as much paper as possible in affixing their autographs. The spirit and 
calligraphy of John Hancock inspired them to prominent penmanship as 
they signed what proved to be a declaration of independence against stagna- 
tion of their case. 

For fifteen months, Mr. Talmage preached in the old church to congre- 
gations which filled the edifice beyond the doors, and which, in any thing 
like mild weather, thronged the fronting street as well. The pew rentals — ■ 
as things then went — swelled to great proportions, and would have stood 
indefinite increase. It only required an annual auction and a judicious 
pressure of the premium principle to render the church a veritable chapel 
of ease to all but the souls of earnest men. The time came to strike, and 
the blow fell. Mr. Talmage, in a single meeting, persuaded by his appeal. 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN, 



91 



a therefore unanimously adverse board of trustees into a unanimous decision 
to sell the church, and to erect a Free Tabernacle, holding hundreds for the 
tens the church accommodated. He formally and by document resigned 
his salary of seven thousand dollars, and told his trustees they need pay 
him no salary at all, unless the free plan allowed it. He would trust in God 
for his Hvelihood. His self-abnegation and faith in the undertaking were the 
final arguments that carried. A single sermon fused all the people into 
unity on the same subject. The church was sold, as was thought. God 
had another purpose for it, of which more in the proper place. The plan 
of the building — ground being opportunely secured adjoining the old 
church — was the next thing. Trustees and pastors, and elders and leading 
men of the society, put themselves into communication with the most 
eminent architects. None of them caught the idea wanted, or if any of them 
did, they ran away from it with a rapidity only equal to the hesitancy with 
which they crept up to it. ''I want a building to hold four thousand people 
on one floor. The pews must command an equally clear view of the plat- 
form; pulpit, I want none. They must all form semi-circles converging 
from that platform, and must gradually rise, so as to give those far off as 
good a chance to see and hear as those near by. Amphitheatrical must be 
the form. An immense family gathering round a fire-place must be the 
ideal. Make it that way; make it as little like a church as possible, so the 
people not used to sacred edifices will feel welcome, and you will make your 
fortune." That is what the preacher said to the architects. The success 
with which they did not assimilate the idea was only inferior -to the tenacity 
with which he adhered to it. At last a young architect had a happy thought. 
He asked the pastor to sketch out the idea. He did, on a scrap of paper. 
The architect slightly amplified it on an envelope on his knee. He was 
given till that night to re-amplify the drawing into plans. He did so, and 
the pastor's idea, finally realized by the graphic pencil of the architect, was 
adopted on sight. 

In four months from that date the result was seen. It was the Taberna- 
cle. Its ground-plan can be illustrated in brief. Let the reader imagine 
a horse-shoe so large as to inclose within its sides nearly half an acre of 



92 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



ground. Let an inclination of from four to six feet be given to that horse- 
shoe, the lowest part being the two ends of the sides. Within that half an 
acre draw lines curving with boundaries of the shoe. Bridge the opening 
at the ends with a platform. Let the lines be pews full of people — half an 
acre of them. Put a man on the platform, and an immense organ behind 
him. That is the ground-floor of the Tabernacle. 

The system of free seats was an essential part of this institution. The seats 
were free, just as inter-State trade is free — that is, they were subject to no 
duty, tariff, rental, charge, bonus, or premium, whatever. They were also free 
as a man's house is ; free to himself and to his family. Instead of massing the 
thousands as a mob, and dispersing them in the wilderness of space^ — as the 
ten tribes were — the rule in the Tabernacle was to assign the seats freely and 
permanently to families, in the plain manner of priority of appHcation assur- 
ing priority of choice. By this means the home feeling was preserved, the 
family solidarity was guaranteed. Classification of the multitudes on the 
church books, each pew-number standing against the name and residence 
of a member, rendered systematic pastoral work entirely possible and organ- 
izable. No other plan would serve under the circumstances. This free 
plan has had its vindication in the entire success the voluntary mode of 
giving it necessitated. The mode pursued whereby to maintain the home 
feeling, and to keep families intact in the church, overcame the di^^icul- 
ties elsewhere met with, of supporting the Gospel by the chance co^ntribu- 
tions of a scattered, desultory mob. These pews were held in perpetuity by 
occupants and their descendants. The congregation had fallen in love with 
the plan, and would have no other. Insensibly, but most powerfully, this 
truly democratic domestic policy was in keeping with, and largely affected, 
and was affected by, the very simple, yet impressive mode of worship in the 
church. As a programme, the mode of worship there could not have been 
more direct and unceremonial. As a spectacle, there could have been nothing 
more imposing than that mode in action. All of the thousands sat within an 
equal view, and had an equal view. The acoustic qualities of the audito- 
rium were perfect. Every word in whispered cadence from the platform would 
be heard as distinctly as the loudest tones. The order of service was like 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



93 



unto that in all wholly non-liturgical Protestant churches. The first thing 
done was to sing the doxology. The mighty organ, the one that was made 
for the Boston Jubilee, and made over again for the Tabernacle, played 
immortal ''Old Hundred," graphically enough to syllable every word to the 
ear. A precentor stood on the platform. The people rose en masse, and then 
God was praised, from whom all blessings flow — praised, it really sounds 
and seems, by all creatures here below. In volume, the singing has been 
not inaptly, but rather singularly called, a new Long Island Sound. In 
culture, expressiveness, and adaptation of tone to sentiment, the organ 
and the people harmonized most finely. The best possibilities of congrega- 
tional singing were their realities. Then followed the Lord's Prayer, and 
after it the reading of the Scripture lesson, and that the pastor expounded, 
illustrated, enforced, as he proceeded. His remarks were distinguished by 
freshness, fervor, most incisive appositeness, and an affluence of imagery, as 
well as by a continuous quantity of keen practical common sense, that made 
the Scripture-reading the string on which many sermons in epitome were 
hung. The reading of the Scriptures was as marked a feature as the sermon, 
and the effect unlike anything ever before seen in church. Some grand 
old hymn, m.ay be "Rock of Ages," ''A Charge to Keep I Have," or "Show 
Pity, Lord," or some other grand classic of the church, was then sung by 
everybody. Mr. Talmage made all sing. On one occasion he said, as he 
gave out the second hymn, "My brethren, if I thought you would sing this 
hymn no better than you did the first, I would go into the side room and 
wait till you get through. Let it be the grandest song this side of heaven." 
The prayer succeeded, in which the pastor carried his own wants and those 
of his people, his country, and the church, straight to the throne. The 
graphicness of it was the intense recital of human needs. The fervor of it was 
the supreme appreciation of Divine fullness. The simplicity of it was the 
child-like certainty of answer then and there. The vehemence of it was the 
awful consciousness of souls unsaved and unconcerned. The triumph of it 
was a literal loss of self in the overpowering realization of Christ's love and 
boundless bounty and beauty. Another hymn, all singing as if the gates 
above were opened for those within to catch the song of those below; an4 



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then the sermon. The sermons of Talmage were extemporaneous, and 
depended for their presentation upon the reporter's pencil, and yet, being 
printed just as they were deHvered, they reveal wonderful qualities of pre- 
cision, excision, memory, directness and study. They are as" condensed as 
theorems, as round, pointed, and polished as essays. 

The method of their delivery was decidedly picturesque. On one occa- 
sion, when about to give a sermon, he walked down to the front of his 
platform, and then suddenly turning his back on the congregation, rushed 
madly back, his arms in the air, his coat-tails flying. People gasped, think- 
ing he had gone mad. He stopped, whirled, stood still an instant, then 
shouted, "Young man, you are rushing to destruction!" Then he preached 
a powerful sermon against the vice and intemperance of young city men. 

We see therefore that his methods sometimes bordered on the histrionic. 
His church had footlights rather than candles. He suited the action to the 
word so effectively that when Moses smote the rock the pulpit Bible seemed 
to be in danger of dissolution, and when Job rent his mantle one was afraid 
that the preacher might have to buy a new suit of clothes. With all this 
excess of action, however. Dr. Talmage was listened to as much for his 
words as for his gestures. What he said was as interesting as what he did. 
This was proved by the immense vogue his sermons enjoyed when printed. 
Theatrical delivery could not have sold them then. Taken with the delivery 
they were popular. Taken without the delivery they were popular still. No 
preacher of the present day has reached so wide an audience. Wherever the 
country weekly went, with its patent syndicate insides, the sermons actually 
or hypothetically ''preached last Sunday by the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage" 
were better known than the novels of any novelist of the day. Nor can it be 
doubted that the influence of those sermons was for good. 

THE THBEE TABEHNAOLES. 

Dr. Talmage' s career was intimately associated with, almost founded 
upon, his connection with his three tabernacles in Brooklyn, more widely 
known by name than any church in America, witih the possible exception 
of Plymouth. The ground for the first Tabernacle, on Schermerhorn street 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



95 



and Third avenue, was broken in June, 1870, a year and three months after 
Dr. Talmage came to the Central Presbyterian Church, and when he had 
made it apparent that the old building would not begin to hold his audi- 
ences. The building was dedicated September 25, 1870. It was not an 
especially expensive church, as is indicated by the haste with which it was 
constructed. It was of brick, covered with corrugated iron, and was 
officially called an iron building, but was popularly known as "the tin 
tabernacle." It cost $40,000 to $45,000, would seat fifteen hundred per- 
sons and was supposed to be ample in size. 

We give here the account of the original dedication, which appeared 
next day in the New York Times of Monday, September 26, 1870: 

"Four months ago the Central Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn com- 
menced the erection of a grand free tabernacle on Schermerhom street, 
near State street, in that city, and yesterday, September 25, the work being 
completed, the edifice was dedicated to the service of God. The pastor, 
the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, has for years been known as one of the 
most consistent and able champions of free pews and a free Gospel, and 
the splendid edifice owes its existence in no small degree to his untiring 
efforts. The house outside looks more like a railway station than like a 
church. Mind, it is an amphitheater, the seats being arranged in the arc 
of a circle, in the center of which are the organ and a platform. There is no 
pulpit. The walls, which are of iron, are painted lead-color, the effect of 
which is to give an air of height and Hghtness to the, entire building; the 
roof is of the same tint. In the center of the ceiling is a large skylight 
with 187 prisms of glass, from which the entire place is lighted up. The 
house is 150 feet long by 100 feet wide, and the seats will accommodate 
3,500 auditors. Should even that sitting room be found too small, it is the 
intention of the managers to^ build a gallery that will accommodate 1,500 
more. The organ is the same that was used at the recent great musical 
festival in Boston. About the only defect observable yesterday was a 
sUght echo that came from the back part of the house, when the pastor 
commenced speaking. The congregation present taxed to the utmost 
the capacity of the house. Every seat was filled, and many were compelled 



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to stand. On tihe platform beside the pastor were seated Rev. Messrs. 
Lackwood, Eggleston, Taylor, Butler and Collum. The services were 
commenced by singing the old looth psalm. The invocation was offered 
by Mr. Lackwood, the Bible lesson was read by Mr. Eggleston, and prayers 
were offered by Mr. Taylor. The sermon was delivered by the pastor. 
His text was Luke xiv 123, 'Compel them to come in.' " 

GROWTH OF THE CONGREGATION". 

How well the preaching of Talmage ''compelled them to cqme in" we 
know. The sitting room was, as here anticipated, found too small, and 
in less than a year the proposed gallery had to be built. After this addition 
a second dedicatory service was 'held in 1871, in which the Rev. Dr. Stephen 
H. Ting of New York participated. Of the great organ mentioned in the 
Times article we shall hear more hereafter, in the words of Talmage himself, 
it being the subject of perhaps the most poetical descriptive phrase he ever 
uttered. 

Talmage's championship of "free pews and a free Gospel" was so impor- 
tant a feature of the first years of his Brooklyn pastorate that we quote here 
extracts from a sermon on the subject, preached by him three years after 
this time. In one of these extracts he alludes to the successful working of 
the free pew system in the Old Tabernacle, meaning thereby the one whose 
building and dedication we have described in this chapter. As we have 
seen, the possibility of establishing the system for which he here argues was 
the chief inducement which brought him from Philadelphia to Brooklyn. 
*'I propose to-night," says he, "to argue on behalf of a free church. There 
are a great many who do not quite understand the plans and policies of 
such a church. In the first place, I believe in such a church because it 
seems to me to be the Scriptural idea. The apostle James says : Tf there 
come into your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and 
there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; and ye have respect to him 
that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him. Sit thou here in a good 
place; and say to the poor. Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool, 
are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 97 

thoughts?' In other words, the apostle James draws a picture. It is a 
meeting of Christian people; the usher stands at the door; two people come 
to the door and ask for seats. The usher looks at the one man, examines 
him from head to foot, sees that his garments are dictated by the recent 
fashion, and says, 'Come here, sir, I'll give you an excellent seat;' takes 
him far up in front, gives 'him a seat and says, 'I hope you will be very 
comfortable.' Then the usher goes back, sees the other man, scrutinizes 
him very thoroughly, and says, Toor coat, worn shoes, old hat. I think you 
will find a very good place to stand in that corner.' Now, the lightnings 
of that passage strike sudh an usher; in other words, you have no right 
to arrange a man's position in the house of God according to his financial 
qualifications. Do you suppose that the seats in the Tabernacle of olden 
time, the temple, and the synagogue, were ever rented by worshipers? 
Oh, no; you tell me those were miraculous times. You say in our times 
churches are such expensive institutions. We want all this costly machin- 
ery. Let me tell you no church of the day costs 'half so much as did the 
old temple, and yet that temple in olden times was supported by voluntary 
contributions. * * * How different it would be in all our churches if, instead of 
having them supported by a few men, we could have the great masses of 
the people bring their mites into the Lord's treasury! 

BEASONS FOR A FREOE CHURCH. 

'T argue, further, in behalf of a free church, because I think it is the only 
practical common-sense mode for city evangelization. The Church has 
tried scores of ways. We have gone out with tracts, and with our Bibles 
and religious books, among the people in the destitute parts of the city. 
Some have refused to take them. Some have burned them up. Some 
have read them and tried to reform; but as long as we leave them down 
amidst the evil influences by which they are surrounded, and do not bring 
them into some Christian church — if you reform them fifty times, fifty 
times they will be unreformed. In other words, here is a man down by 
the marshes with chills and fever. The physician comes and gives him 
quinine, and stops the chills; but just as long as that man continues to 
live down by the swamps, he will be subjected to the same ailment. Bring 



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him out oin the hill-top, where the atmosphere is clear, if you want him to 
be permanently restored. Now, I say of those people who live in the slums 
of city destitution, as long as you leave them there they will fall into their 
old sins; but if you bring them into the healthy atmosphere of a Christian 
church, then you may hope for their permanent reformation. If you can 
say to them, 'There is a free church, there is a free Bible, there is a free 
cross, and yonder is a free heaven,' they will accept the invitation and 
come with you. 

"I knew this city of Brooklyn eighteen years ago. Since then there have 
been great efforts made for the evangelization of the city, and yet you know 
as well as I that there is more sin in the city to-day, more Sabbath-breaking, 
and a vaster population who come not under any kind of religious influence. 
Where is Brooklyn to-day? In the churches? No! It is the exception 
when people go to church. A vast majority of the masses are traveling on 
down toward death, unassisted because uninvited. Now, if a surgeon goes 
into a hospital, and there are three hundred patients, and he cures twenty 
of them and the other two hundred and eighty die, I call that unsuccessful 
treatment. If the Church of God has saved some, when I compare the few 
that have been redeemed with the vast multitude that have perished, I 
say it has been a comparative failure; and if the old plan of conducting 
the Church of Christ has failed, let us start the ship on another tack and 
try another plan. In other words, come back toi the Gospel theory, and 
throw wide open the doors of our church and tell the people to come in, 
without regard to their past history or their present financial or moral 
condition. 

POUR CLASSES TO SAVE. 

"Again, I argue in behalf of a free church, because there are three or 
four classes of people that will especially he touched by it. Among them 
will be men who were once very influential in the churches, but who lost 
their property, and consequently cannot meet the pew-rents. I am not 
speaking of imaginary cases. I >have seen scores of that kind of cases in 
the city of Brooklyn. In 1837, or in 1857, or 1867, they lost their property. 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



99 



They used to sit near the pulpit. The next year they went farther back 
in the church. The next year farther back, and farther back as their 
finances entirely failed them, until at last they sat back by the door; and 
when the treasurer went down the aisle, he tapped the man's shoulder and 
said, Tf you don't pay up, you will have to vacate this seat.' What became 
of that man? He went out from the house of God. What becomes of 
the great multitude who once were influential in the Church of God, who, 
having lost their property, cannot meet the pew-rents in the churches? 
They have gone — some to infidelity — some into lives of dissipation — God 
only knows where they have gone! Will men of any self-respect go to 
church under such a state of circumstances? I tell you, nay. If it were 
my case, I would stay at home and gather my children about me, and read 
to them of Christ and a free heaven, out of which a man is never pitched be- 
cause he cannot pay his pew-rent! At the very time a man most needs 
the consolation of religion — when his earthly fortunes have failed — at the 
very time that he needs most to be told about treasures that never fail, in 
banks that never break — ^the Church of God turns its back upoin that man, 
and the work of breaking down that the Wall Street gamblers began, the 
Church of God finishes. h< >i< * yiy friends, open the doors of a 
free church, where men may meet together without invidious comparisons, 
and they will potur in like the tides of the sea. We have been barring out 
this class of. men from the house of God, and barring them out from the 
very gate of heaven." 

The preacher goes on to appeal successively to the middle class, to the 
poor and to the rich, in behalf of his favorite idea, and exclaims, "When you 
shall throw open the churches of the living God as free churches, then I want 
to tell you that the gold, and the silver, and the myrrh, and the frankincense 
will come down to^ the feet of Jesus." 

Of course, that is simply the argument that the church without a fixed 
system of pew-rents will pay better. There follow some personal references 
which lend this sermon something of autobiographical interest. 'T am 
not merely theorizing," says he. ''We demonstrated the possibiHty of a 
free church in the Old Tabernacle. There were the poor there. Then we 
L.cFO. 



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had the middle classes — men who toiled; some with hand, and some with 
brain — for brain-work is poorly paid in this' country. We had many of 
that class, and they had a hard struggle. Then we had more rich men 
than we ever had in the old city church — more than we ever expected — 
men who said, 1 will pay for the Gospel not only for myself and my family, 
but there is a man in that pew who cannot afiford to pay anything; I will 
pay for him. There is another man; I will pay for him. And instead of 
sending my money to foreign lands, where I have no doubt it does good, 
I will preach the Goispel to all those in the same church who cannot afford 
to purchase religious advantages.' So it was practically demonstrated; 
and we shall, God willing, on a larger scale, demonstrate it in the new Taber- 
nacle. And if yoiu shall be afraid to come to such a place lest you be socially 
contaminated, I hope you will stay away, lest you contaminate us!" What 
a delightfully characteristic turn! 

AN AliL ABSOUBING PHINCIPLE. 

am in favor of a free church/' he continues, ''because all the Provi- 
dential indications, so far as we are concerned, are in that direction. It has 
been the all-absorbing principle in my soul ever since I entered the ministry. 
It was the thing that brought me to this city. I had a comfortable home 
in Philadelphia, but this was a Gospel principle I thought I would like to 
see tried. I came here, and it so happened that all the people who gathered 
around me were of the same opinion, and so we have been unanimous. We 
were unanimous in the style of the new church, and about the architecture 
of the second. We were unanimous about having it free. When we were 
burned down we were unanimous about reconstruction, and the principle 
we developed in the old church we will try to develop in the new. Where 
the old Tabernacle stopped when it burned dowm, the new Tabernacle will 
begin when it rises up. 

"Again, I am in favor of the free church, because it appeals to men of 
the world, as no other kind of church does. A prominent minister of New 
York said to me a week or two ago, There are noi people who come into 
our churches here in New York but Christian people, Somehow, we do 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



101 



not get hold of the world' I said, 'The majority of those who come into 
my religious services are of the world, and I think it must be that the free 
Christian principle is attracting them. In other words, men of the world 
cannot understand the limitations and the exclusiveness of the house of 
God. They say, 7/ you are brothers and sisters, why do not the rich and 
poor meet together? The Lord is the Maker of them all.' 'Oh,' you say, 
'those men of the world do not do their duty.' I know they do not do' their 
duty; but if this world is to be brought to Christ — if Bibles are to be printed, 
if churches are to be built, if Christian institutions are to be supported — I 
ask you are not the dollars of the man of the world worth as much as the 
dollars of the man of the church? Besides that, we expect these men of 
the world en masse to march after a while into the kingdom of Christ. Hav- 
ing seen the frank, sympathetic men of the world around me as my com- 
panions, I expect they will be my companions when they and I have crossed 
the flood into the great eternity. I have lived with them in this city, and 
I expect they will be my neighbors in the better city. I know all their 
trials and temptations; I know all their business perplexities; I know all 
their hardships; and I want to stand before them a few years, and tell them 
of that Christ who will be their security in every financial strait and their 
bondsrrian in every crisis, and Who, when the nations are in a panic and the 
world ablaze, will declare everlasting dividends of light, and joy, and triumph 
to all those who have invested their affections in him. 

A MATTER OF PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION. 
Men and brethren, brothers and sisters in Christ, are you ready for such 
a work? That which three years ago I talked to you as a mere theory has 
become a matter of practical demonstration. The night before the old 
Tabernacle was burned down, the trustees of my church met together, re- 
viewed the finances, looked at the income, looked at the outgo, and decided 
that the income exceeded the outgo, proving a free church practicable. 
That being demonstrated, it was enough for that church. We will take 
that principle, and develop it on a larger scale. God vvill this year let you 
strike a blow that will ring through eternal ages. The grandeur of the 
work to which you have put your hand no language can describe, no imag- 



102 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



ination can conceive, no plummet sound, no ladder scale. If you shall, in 
the strength of God, as I think you will, rise up to this work of giving a 
free Gospel to the masses of Brooklyn and the masses of this country, it 
will take eternal ages for you to count up the rewards of your faithfulness. 
If some may scoff at you, let them scoff; remembering that they scoffed at 
Nehemiah, and at Daniel, and at Christ, and pronounced them fools. Re- 
member, besides, that there are tens of thousands of good people in this 
land, and in Britain, who are praying for our success as a church. Above 
all, remember that we are under the benediction of Him in whose word 
we trust and in whose strength we go forward. The mountains may de- 
part, the seas may burn, the stars may scatter, the heavens may double up 
like pardhment, the sun may burn down in the socket, and all the worlds 
fly in the Judgment-day like thistle-down in a tempest; but God will back 
out of His promises, and betray His discipleship, and break his oath — 
never! never!" 

It is not necessary to point out the splendid eloquence of this perora- 
tion, its earnestness, its fervor, its poetic or rather prophetic frenzy. The 
remark would come more appropriately perhaps under the consideration 
of the qualities of Talmagean oratory, but we prefer to point O'Ut here that 
in most of the sermons of Talmage we have a very prosy, matter-of-fact 
introduction with all sorts of homely illustrations, and from such low and 
common things he rises towards his close until he could truly say : 

"My hands on the stars of the sky take hold. 
And all of the world to my heart I fold!" 

Not its rhetorical beauty, however, but its importance as enunciating 
what he calls ''the all-absorbing principle in my soul ever since I entered 
the ministry" is what gives it its important place in the biography of Tal- 
mage. There is, however, a sermon still more autobiographical in charac- 
ter, and so important for the understanding of l^he ideals and achievements 
of Talmage during his first four years in Brooklyn that v/e give its important 
passages a place here in spite of the fact that the burning of the Taber- 
nacle precedes this sermon in point of time. The description of the con- 
flagration we defer to another chapter. 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN, 



103 



A HAPPY ANNIVERSARY. 

Preaching in April, 1873, from the text, ''He thanked God and took 
courage," which he says is descriptive of his own feehngs, Talmage says 
to his congregation: 

''You may not be aware that this is the anniversary of my settlement 
as the pastor of this church. Fifty-two times the shuttle has flown, in 
each flight weaving a week, with a golden border of Sabbath. Three hun- 
dred and sixty-four times the clock has struck twelve for the noon and 
twelve for the night. In that time, how many marriage garlands have 
been twisted, how many graves dug, how many sorrows suffered, how 
many fortunes won, how many souls lost, hoiw many immortals saved! 

"Four years ago, this month, I came to you with chastened spirit, for 
only the Sabbath before I had delivered my valedictory sermon in Philadel- 
phia, and the sharp laceration of soul which I felt that Sabbath night as, 
standing at the foot of the pulpit, I bade farewell to long-tried friends, 
many of them my own children in the Gospel, can be appreciated only 
by those who have gone through the same process. Coming here, I found 
strangers in both boards of the church, and a building almost empty. Still 
my heart failed not, for I was sure that God had called me to the work, 
and, however weak a man may feel in himself, he is strong while leaning 
against the throne of the Lord Almighty. Instead of standing among 
strangers to-day, I lo'ok off upon familiar faces, and upon those with whom 
I have been taking sweet counsel, and those whoim I know are remember- 
ing me, day by day, in their prayers. So I shall address them this morn- 
ing as one large, Christian family. I have thought that in this, my anni- 
versary sermon, it might be well if I should tell you what, by the help of 
God, I have been trying to do in this congregation. 

"In the first place, I remark, I have been trying to win your confidence 
and love, not by sycophancy or by the consultation of your prejudices, 
but by preaching a straight forzvard Gospel, regardless as to where it hit." 
We italicize this sentence as containing the very soul of Talmage's preach- 
ing. "A_ minister living amidst people who do not believe in him cannot 
be useful. When a congregation wish that their pastor would be called 



104 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN, 



to some other position, he really has a call to go. When they have the 
idea that he is influenced by selfish and worldly motives, his usefulness is 
done, and he as really has a call to go as he had a call to come. There are 
churches being depleted and blasted by a ministry not adapted to them. A 
minister has no more right to kill a church than a church has a right to kill 
a minister. I know a man who professes to be a minister of Christ, who 
is in his third settlement. The two previous churches that he served have 
come to extinction as the result of that ministry, and there is not much 
prospect that the third will long survive; while, on the other hand, there 
are ministers of Christ who have for thirty and forty years stood in the 
same places, and the tie of affection and confidence between pastor and 
people has all the time strengthened." Talmage seems here almost to 
divine the twenty-one years during which he was yet to be this people's 
pastor. How close and personal the tie that bound them appears in his 
tone when he says: *'Let me be frank, and say to you, my dear people, that 
I have tried to win your confidence and your deep sympathy in my Chris- 
tian work. If you have seen in me many shortcomings, be aware of the 
fact that I have had a deeper realization of them than you possibly could 
have had, and I am here to say that you will have given me more than I de- 
serve, and that your kindness through the last four years has made my min- 
istry in this place an undisturbed satisfaction. 

WOITLD CREATE CHRISTIAN SOCIAI/ITY. 

"I remark again, I have tried, in my ministry during the past year and 
the past four years, to create amidst this people Christian sociality. There 
are churches that are arctic seas, iceberg grinding against iceberg. The 
attendants upon them come as men come into the ferryboat, sitting down 
beside each other — no nod of recognition, no hand-grasping of fellowship, 
no throb of brotherly and sisterly affection. They come in, they sit down, 
they go out. From Saturday to Monday morning they are ferried over 
by Christian ordinances, and that is all there is of it. Now, my dear brother, 
if you are cold and hard and selfish, then the higher the wall you build around 
your soul, the better. You would do well to be exclusive; but if there is in 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



105 



you anything kind, anything lovely, anything noble, anything useful, let 
it shine out." 

Our readers will recall the previously cited passage in which Talmage 
exalted the home by calling it a churdh. He has here the obverse of that 
statement and humanizes the church by insisting that it should be a home. 
"I say, let us have a kindly sympathy and helpfulness toward those who are 
all around us. Every church was intended by God to be a large family 
circle — of fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters. What kind of 
a family circle would that be where the brothers did not recognize each 
other, and the parents were characterized by frigidity and heartlessness? 
Sons and daughters of God, have you no higher appreciation of the larger 
Christian brotherhood in which you are gathered in churches? Who is that 
that used to sit before you in the Tabernacle? Do not know? Who is that 
that used to sit at your right hand and at your left hand? Do not know? 
You ought to have known! It is a sin not to be acquainted with those 
who sit by us in the house of God year after year. Do not stand upon 
the formaHties of society. In the name of Christ, I declare to yon that 
the privilege of giving the right hand of fellowship to every one who comes 
to the same churdh. We have tried to culture this Christian sociality in 
the sociable; much has already been accomplished, and when our new church 
shall be built, we will put our hand more earnestly to the work." 

WERE BEECHEB'S GUESTS. 

I We may explain here that at this time Talmage's Tabernacle congrega- 
tion were guests of that other great preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, in 
Plymouth Church. The new Tabernacle was not finished until ten months 
after this time. Perhaps the most important thing which Talmage has to 
say here concerning his own work is contained in the following paragraph: 
'T have tried in this church to preach an every-day religion. The vast 
majority of my congregation are in business life. It would have been ab- 
surd for me to talk about abstract trials when I saw by the paper that gold 
was going down, and men were losing their fortunes. We must bring a 
Gospel comfort just suited to the condition of the people to whom we 



106 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



preach. Here is a physician who comes intO' a sick-room where there is a 
case of diphtheria. Does he apply to it medicines for cholera, or yellow 
fever, or marasmus? Oh, no; it is a specific for diphtheria. And if we 
want to make the Gospel successful in the 'hearts of men in the way of com- 
fort, we must bring that particular phase of it which is thoroughly adapted 
to the case. So I have from time to time tried to bring you a Gospel that 
would he appropriate in Wall Street, and in Broadway, and in Schermer- 
horn street, and in Monta^gue street. * * * Your religion, instead of 
being a robe tO' wrap around you and keep you warm, in the chill blasts of 
trial, has been merely a string of beads around your neck, very beautiful to 
look at, and that is all. In the last panic in New York, amidst all the ex- 
citement, there was a man found in Wall Street, in his back office, with a 
loaded pistol lying on the table where he was writing a farewell letter to 
his family. What did that man most need ? Was it the counsel of the 
brokers? The help of the note-shavers? No! He wanted the comfort 
and the peace of Christ's religion. I have seen a man in a business strait 
go through, sustained by the grace of God. By disaster, in one nig<ht, his 
fortune all went. When I saw him before, he was worth hundreds of thou- 
sands of dollars; now he was not worth a farthing. Yet he was counting 
up his heavenly treasures. If God had knocked out the bottom of his 
earthly fortunes, tfhat bottom was found to be the top of the chest in which 
are the jewels of heaven! That is what I call an every-day religion. 

TO DISPEL CONVENTIONALITIES. 

^ "Again, I have tried, in these four years in which I have been your pastor, 
to dispel the conventionalities of the Church. There is a tendency among 
Christian people to walk in religious things on ecclesiastical stilts, instead 
of coming down upon a plain, common-sense level. How few people talk 
religion; they whine about it! What charm is there for a wide-awake, 
warm-hearted, enthusiastic man amidst the cold formalities of the Church 
of God? He sees through them; he sees they are a sham. Friday morning, 
you go into a merchant's store and buy a bill of hosiery. How his face 
lights up! How cheerful he is! How fascinating he is while he is selling 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



107 



the bill of goods! You go away, saying, That is one of the most agreeable 
men I ever met in my life/ That very Friday evening you go into the 
prayer-meeting where that same Christian merchant worships, and you find 
him getting up and recommending the religion of Jesus Christ with a fune- 
real countenance and a doleful phraseology, enough to make an undertaker 
burst into tears. How few people there are who talk cheerfully about 
the religion of Jesus! In other words, that man of whom I spoke had more 
exhilaration when he was selling a bill of goods than in recommending the 
religion which makes all heaven ring with the anthems of th.e free. Now, 
Oiught that so to be? How many are driven from the doors of the churches 
by the simple reasotn that they do not want such a repulsive religion. They 
are afraid to shake hands with a Christian man, lest they shall be religiously 
assaulted. I remember very well how it was when I was a boy. I laid 
one hour and a half under the raspberry bushes in the garden to escape 
from the minister and the elder, who came to my father's house on a family 
visit; and my father came out on the back steps, and cried, 'De Witt, where 
are you?' De Witt made no answer! Ought our religion ta repel or at- 
tract? My little child, four years old, said to her mother, ^Ma, ma, I saw in 
a book a picture of a man and a picture of God, and the man looked awfully 
frightened because he saw God. Now,' she says, *if I had been there and 
God had come in, I would not have been frightened; I would have just 
gone right up and put my arms around his neck and kissed 'him.' Well, I 
thought that was pretty good theology. In other words, religion ought to 
invite our caresses, instead of driving the world howling away, as though 
it were something disagreeable, repulsive, and to> be hated. 

COMFORT TO THE BEHEAVED. 

"Again, I have, in these four years in which I have ministered to you, 
tried to preach a gospel of comfort to the bereaved. This is the most deli- 
cate work to which the preacher is ever called. If you do not know how to 
treat a woiund, you had better not touch it. How many people come to the 
wounds of the soul with a spiritual quackery, and they irritate and poison 
the wounds instead of cure. It may require no great skill to take a sloop 



108 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



across the North river, but it does to engineer a steamship across the Atlan- 
tic; and there may be no great skill required to heal a little sorrow of the 
soul, but to take one through the storms and tossing seas of tribulation and 
trial does require some tact, and ingenuity, and especial grace. I do not 
suppose that in the four years in which I have ministered to you a single 
family has escaped bereavement — if not in your immediate circle, then in a 
near circle. Oh! how many households have been broken up by bereave- 
ment since I came among you. From most other sorrows you can run 
away. You can go home; but haw if a part of the home itself is gone? 
Then it is not so easy. Then everything reminds you of your loss. Sup- 
pose you should sit down at a piano, put a piece of music on the rack, then 
put your foot on the pedal and your fingers on the keys — the music would 
start off magnificently. But suppose you struck one key and the chord did 
not respond, because it was broken. Why, that ruins the entire accompani- 
ment. Well, sometimes in life you have been going on in great joy and 
hilarity, when suddenly you have thought of a voice, ju&t one voice, that 
has been hushed, of one heart that is still, and the silent key spoiled all the 
music. ' 

''Oh, if we could all die together! If we could keep the lambs and 
the sheep of our family flock all together until some bright spring day, the 
birds a-chant, and the water a-glitter, and then we together could hear the 
voice of the good Shepherd, and we could all go thro-ugh fhe flood, hand in 
hand! If we only knew when we were to die, and we could gather our 
family and say, 'Now Jesus calls us, and we must away;' and then we could 
put our little ones in the bed and straighten out their limbs and say, 'Sleep, 
now, the last sleep,' and then we could go to our own couches and lie down, 
and say, 'Master, we are all ready. The children have gone, and we are 
ready.' But it is not that way. It is one by one — one by one. It may be 
in mid-winter, and the snow comes down twenty inches deep above our 
fresh grave; or it may be in the dark, damp, chill March midnight; or it 
may be in a hotel, cmr arm too weak to pull the bell for help; or it may be so 
suddenly we cannot say good-bye. Oh, death is bitter — a racking, tre- 
mendous curse! The apple that our first parents plucked from the for- 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN, 



109 



bidden tree had in it two black seeds, one called Sin, the other called Death. 
But I bless God that I have been able during these four years to preach to 
you resurrection hope. A gale from heaven has blown off the 'white-caps' 
of the billow of sorrow, and the feet of Christ have trampled the waves to a 
level, until over the glittering floor of the hushed waters have marched all 
the consolations of God, troop by troop. 

'Oh, weep no more. 

Your comfort slain; 
The Lord is risen, 

He lives again.' 

"So now I take the harp of Gospel comfort, and play three tunes : 'Weep- 
ing may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning' — that is one; 
'All things work together for good to those who love God' — that is two ; 'And 
the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to living foun- 
tains of water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes' — and that 
is the third. 

CHRIST THE ONLY SAVIOIL 

"Above all, during the past year I have tried to present to you Christ the 
only Savior from sin, and death, and hell. I have tried to show you that 
unless a man be born again he can not get into heaven. If there be any 
truth about God or Christ, or death or judgment, or heaven or hell, that I 
have not presented, I wish you would let me know what it is, that now I 
may declare it. / have tried to show you that religion was an indispensable 
xthing, not a mere adornment, hut something that you must have or die. 
I know that truth is not always considered popular at this day; but somehow 
people have continued to come and hear it. I feel it is a vital truth of Chris- 
tianity: 'Believe in Christ and be saved — refuse him and die.' Christ has 
been so lovely to me that I want all the world to love Him, and I have, with 
all the types and figures of God's word that I could find, presented this 
Jesus to you, and I am glad to know that many of you have accepted the 
offer. The angels of God have not stopped singing 'Harvest Home.' There 
are scores and scores of souls who during this past year have entered the 
church on earth prepared, as I trust, for the church in heaven. 



110 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



''Now the year is done. If you have neglected any duty, or if I have 
neglected any duty, it is neglected forever. Each year has its work; if we 
do not do the work during that year, we never do it. The year has been 
to me one of great happiness — the happiest year of my ministry, and the 
happiest year in my life. The great calamity that put our Tabernacle in 
ashes has, under the good hand of God, been the best blessing that could 
possibly have come to us. I think we all feel that. It has consolidated us 
as nothing could have done, and it has gathered the sympathy and the good 
feeling of Christians of all denominations in this country, and from the other 
side of the seas. And it has shown me that in this church there is a great 
band of Christian men and women who will stop at no self-denial, and who 
will be afraid of no hard work that is to be endured for Christ. The success 
of the recent effort made in another room in this building is significant of 
that, and the masons have already begun the foundations of a grand, 
glorious, free Christian church. While the best men and the best news- 
papers in this land are in sympathy with us, you know very well that there 
are some who are not in sympathy with the work done by this church. They 
do not understand it, and never will. In proportion as you are faithful will 
you be abused; in other words, the faster a ship goes, the more angrily will 
the waters boil. So there are some secular and religious newspapers of this 
day that are full of spite and full of venom. You say yoiu do not understand 
it. There is no mystery to me about it. It is natural. It is the history of 
the Church of God all the world over in all ages. I feel that our church is 
on the right track, and I defy all earth and hell; for if God be for us, who 
can be against us? If God spared not His Son, but gave Him up for us, 
shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? I am persuaded that 
neither height, nor depth, nor length, nor breadth shall separate us from 
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Our dhurch will go up, 
and Christ will appear in it, and He will save thousands and thousands of 
souls. I see it coming, and I am in exultation at the prospect. 

ENTERING ON A NEIW YEAK. 

"We enter now upon another year. It will be an eventful year. You and 
I may not live to see its close, for God can spare you and me, and ten thou- 



CALLED TO BROOKLYN. 



Ill 



sand better persons than we are, and still carry on His work ; but His church 
will be prospered. Having risen up as you have to the zvork of giving the 
Gospel to the masses of Brooklyn, nothing can put you to confusion. We 
need no pillar of cloud by day to lead us, for God's angels are sworn to 
defend us; and success in the future is as certain as though on that wall I 
saw coming out in letters of fire, while I speak, 'Lo, I am with you alway, 
even unto the end of the world.' I will live to see the completion of the 
work undertaken. I knOiW if God calls me before that time, He will let me 
come out on the battlements of heaven, and look off on the establishment 
of that work for which my soul longed. Roll on, sweet days of the world's 
emancipation! when the mountains and the hills shall break forth into sing- 
ing, and all the trees of the wood shall clap their hands and instead of the 
thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the 
myrtle-tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name for an everlasting sign 
that shall not be cut off." 

It was no factitious exultation that Talmage felt the April Sunday he 
spoke these words. These four years had given him the largest Protestant 
church and congregation in the world. 

So we see him fighting for freedom, shocking the conventional, smashing 
conventions, ''giving the Gospel to the masses of Brooklyn," a man of forty- 
one, rejoicing in his power and success, thoroughly alive himself and bring- 
ing others to life. 



CHAPTER VIK 

THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 

LONG-CHERISHED IDEA OF TALMAGE — PURPOSE OF TRAINING LAYMEN TO 

PREACH STREET-PREACHING SIMILAR IN PURPOSE TO SALVATION ARMY 

IDEA — LIKENS MINISTERS TO BRIGADIER-GENERALS WITHOUT ANY 
TROOPS. 

The two main projects of Talmage which characterized his first years in 
Brooklyn were first a free church, which, in spite of many difiiculties, he did 
succeed in estabHshing for a time, and second, the institution named in the 
title of this chapter — the Tabernacle Lay College. 

It will be remembered that the Central Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, 
to which Talmage was called from Philadelphia, was sold by the trustees 
yielding to the urging of the pastor. 

The ''old church," as it was called, would not, however, stay 
sold. It came back on the hands of the society, through the default of the 
quasi-purchasers. An admirable property in itself, it provoked and sug- 
gested use. That use was found in the evolution of an idea of a free lay 
culture and training for practical Christian work. Such an idea had for 
years lain, not dormant, but growing in Mr. Talmage's mind. He resolved 
to form and found a college which would freely do for lay Christian men 
and women just what the seminaries do for the clergy, barring dead lan- 
guages. It was desired to have nothing dead about the institution. Alone 
Mr. Talmage unfolded his idea to such men as William E. Dodge, Rev. Dr. 
McCosh, Chancellor Crosby, Rev. Drs. Stevens, Ormiston, William M. Tay- 
lor, Dowling, and a score of others, and to such laymen as Gasherie and 
Josiah De Witt, George H. Stuart, Joseph C. Hutchison, and their kind. The 
idea had inchoately been in the minds or aspirations of not a few of them for 
years. They had never whipped it into even mental shape. They dedicated 

112 



THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE, 



113 



it to the next century. Once proposed to them, the plan roused an almost 
Crusader enthusiasm. The persons referred to, and very many others, at 
once agreed to become lecturers. A permanent resident Professorate was 
established. The students from New York, from adjoining and from remote 
cities and states, came together to the number of half a thousand. Organiza- 
tion was effected immediately. Teaching and drilling at once ensued. The 
lectures began and continued without a failure. Many students, and more 
lecturers and teachers were added to the college during its second year. The 
buildings and facilities existed at hand in the former church of the Tabernacle 
folk. Every subject on which laymen are called to bear witness for Christ — 
every duty of a didactic, polemic, or humane sort, they are called to do for 
and toward their brethren and the world — was in the college taught alike by 
experts in exposition and instruction, and by experts in the art of doing good. 

UNDEItGRADUATES^ PBEACHING STATIONS. 

The undergraduates began and maintained in their first year twenty- 
seven preaching stations in Brooklyn, and the students from other places did 
the same where they lived. The college not merely initiated but forwarded 
toward perfect organization a power in the evangelization of cities that told 
extraordinarily. It grew as it went, and Providence raised it up funds and 
friends exactly where and when needed. Of the potency of this agency in 
this and cognate forms as a Christianizing force, no estimate would be an 
exaggeration, no expectation would be too large. The clergy of all denomi- 
nations welcomed the college as an enduring, self-feeding reservoir of col- 
lateral and constant reinforcements to them. They talked confidently of 
converting the world, the missing link, that which harnessed the pew to the 
pulpit, having been found. Had a benign force vaulted out of the saddle of 
natural law, and jumped astride of the church to ride it to revolution and 
conquest, the joy and hope of the live men, and the scare of the unburied 
dead men, would not have been greater. Of the college Talmage was presi- 
dent. He w^as then everywhere known as a lecturer, and the highest prices 
were paid for his services, but he declined fifty invitations where he accepted 
one. He would for two hours keep his audience in the lecture-hall in excite- 



114 



THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 



ment, going from tenderest pathos to the most boisterous and rolHcksome 
mirth. His resources of mimicry were boundless. 

The Tabernacle Lay College itself passed with the passing of the Taber- 
nacle when once the personal contact and force of Talmage were withdrawn 
from its support, but the scheme then elaborated of training Christian lay 
workers has been adopted at Springfield, Massachusetts, and many other 
places, and so, indirectly, the work which received its impetus from Talmage 
still goes on. "There is great excitement in the ancient Tabernacle," says he 
in his sermon on the Lay College. "Two good men, by the name of Eldad 
and Medad, begin to pray, and to preach, and to instruct. Not having been 
regularly ordained to the work, the jealousy of 'the regulars' in the service 
is aroused, and they come to Moses, asking that these unordained men be 
silenced. But Moses, instead of stopping them, says he wishes that all the 
people would go to preaching, and praying, and exhorting. 'Would God that 
all the people were prophets!' 'Amen!' I say, with as much emphasis as you 
ever heard in an old-fashioned Methodist prayer-meeting." 

SCORNED BEITOMINATIOITAL DIEFEHENCES. 

Talmage was broad enough to have scorn for mere denominational differ- 
ences as a later passage in this sermon shows. Still he did not tmdervalue 
technical training. He says, on the contrary, "we want men who have had 
opportunity of most thorough and elaborate culture in theological seminaries, 
and who have been set apart by the laying on of hands for special work which 
they, and only they, are competent to do. But until the right and the duty 
of all private Christian men and women to work for Christ, in any way they 
think they can serve Him best, is acknowledged, the Church of God will fail 
to perform its mission, and the forces 'of sin will discomfit the forces of right- 
eousness. God has promised victory to the Church of God, but not as long 
as out of five hundred troops four hundred and ninety-nine refuse to shoulder 
the musket and fill the canteen." 

To enlist trained laymen in active Christian work is an idea which in 
another sermon he says will completely revolutionize the methods of the 
church. There was evidently in his mind no hard and fast division of Chris- 



THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 



115 



tians into clerical and lay. As he labors in the Lay College to make laymen 
adopt clerical methods, so he himself in his work frequently adopted lay 
methods — to the great profit of his congregations. 

TWO GREAT PURPOSES. . 

He tells us here of his two great purposes. "I suppose," says he, ''that 
every man has some controlling ideas in his life. Long ago, and before I 
saw any possibility of carrying them out, I had born of God in my soul these 
two desires : First, the establishment of a free church with the home-feeling 
maintained; and, second, the establishment of a college in which private 
Christian men and women might be trained for usefulness. If God will 
grant me to see these two things done, and well done, I think that then I 
would like to go up and rest with Him who is more than all the universe to 
me. The first plan we have lived to see fully developed, and the second now 
starts under auspices and a patronage of talent and piety that must command 
the respect and confidence of the whole country. But the two ideas are one. 
First establish a free church in which to have the people saved, and then 
establish a college where they may be qualified for usefulness. 

'The need of such a college is felt to-day throughout the whole Christian 
world. We have many of the leading men of all denominations in our pro- 
fessorate. If there is anything at all in learned titles, we have the advantage 
of it in our college circular. The printer failed to get our circular done as 
soon as expected, because, as he said, he ran out of 'D's,' and had to go to a 
neighboring printing-office to borrow a new supply of that letter. But what 
is human confirmation compared with that which comes from God through 
His Church, His Providence, and His Word? 

NEED OF MORE TROOPS. 

^'Ministers can not do the work of the world's evangelization. What are 
the few thousand ministers in this country compared to the thirty millions of 
the population! We are numerically too small. You might as well have 
sent ten brigadier-generals without any troops to conquer the Southern Con- 
federacy. Leaving their swords at home, they would have conquered you 
with their penknives. Sin, with its army of drunkenness, and lust, and 



116 THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 

crime, has not yet put out half of its strength, for it can beat us, and not half 
try. Who is getting the victory in our cities to-day — sobriety or intemper- 
ance? Honesty or fraud? Purity or uncleanness? Infidelity or the Gos- 
pel? Light or darkness? Heaven or hell? If you are an honest man, you 
confess that the latter have gained the victory. What is the matter? Are 
the Gospel weapons insufficient? Is the sword of the Spirit dull? Are the 
great howitzers of truth at too short range to throw the bombshells into the 
enemy's fortress? No, no! The great want, and the only want, is more 
troops! Instead of five or ten thousand ministers, we want two million m.en 
and women, sworn that they will neither eat nor sleep until they have slain 
iniquity. But how if you can not get them ? Suppose, after a long war, the 
President should make proclamation for one hundred. thousand men, and they 
were not to be had? But the church has not sent a thousandth part of its 
strength, and the troops are encamping by the still waters of Zion, when 
they ought to be at the front, and would be if you gave them a chance, and 
made them ready for the heat and terror of the contest. 

WORK OF THE PREACHER. 

"Ministers are numerically too small. They do the best they can. They 
are the most overworked class on earth. Many of them die of dyspepsia 
because they can not get the right kind of food to eat, or, getting the right 
kind, are so hurried that they take in down in chunks. They die from con- 
sumption, coming from early and late exposure. If a novelist or a historian 
publishes one book a year, he is considered industrious; but every faithful 
pastor must originate enough thought for three or four volumes every year. 
Ministers receive enough calls in a year from men who have maps, and medi- 
cines, and lightning-rods, and pictures to sell, to exhaust their vitality. They 
are bored with agents of all sorts. They are stood in draughts at funerals, 
and poisoned by the unventilated rooms of invalids, and waited upon by 
committees who want addresses made, until life becomes a burden to bear. 
It is not hard study that make ministers look pale. It is the infinity of inter- 
ruptions and botherations to which they are subjected. If I die before my 
time, it will be at the hand of committees that want an address or a lecture. 



THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 



117 



A man just called on me to give him a lecture by which he might pay the 
expenses of his wedding-trip. Sometimes, after I have been working for 
weeks from six o'clock in the morning until eleven o'clock at night, I have 
heard of some hypochondriac with a run-around or a hang-nail who threat- 
ened to leave the church if I did not pay him more attention. If there were 
fifty hours in each day of the year, and I worked forty of them, I could not 
do the work of this one parish ; and I am not behind most clergymen in dis- 
position to toil. 

"Numerically too small. It is no more the work of the pulpit to convert 
and save the world than it is the work of the pew. If men go to ruin, there 
will be as much blood on your skirts as on mine. 

FARCE OF A FEW C3LERGYMEN. 

"Let us quit this grand farce of trying to save the world by a few clergy- 
men, and let all hands lay hold of the work. Give us in all our churches 
two or three hundred aroused and qualified men and women to help. In most 
churches to-day, five or ten men are compelled to do all the work. A vast 
majority of churches are at their wit's end how to carry on a prayer-meeting 
if the minister is not there, when there ought to be enough pent-up energy 
and religious fire to make a meeting go on with such power that the minister 
would never be missed. The church stands working the pumps of a few min- 
isterial cisterns until the buckets are dry and choked, while there are thou- 
sands of fountains from which might be dipped up the waters of eternal life. 

"Now there may be ministers who will disapprove of this movement for 
qualifying lay-workers — jealous lest their official prerogatives be interfered 
with. But I believe the great cry of the overtasked clergy of the American 
Church to-day is, 'Would God that all the people were prophets !' 

"We need this college to make practical men and women. We, the 
clergy, generally go from our mothers' apron-strings to school; from school 
to college; from college to theological seminary; and, graduating, we sfand 
on the corner of the pulpit with our sermon in our hand, 'shivering on the 
brink, and fear to launch away.' What do we know of the world? The 
world is on its guard in our presence, and does not appear in its true character. 



118 



THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 



Before our professional look and dress, men shrink within themselves. Long 
ago I dropped the ministerial dress, because men seemed to feel bound to 
talk piously in my presence, especially if they were half drunk." 

SHINING LIGHT OF EXAMPLE. 

We should say, answering Talmage's question, *'What do we know of the 
world?" if the question refers to Talmage himself, *'You know a good deal." 
But the clergymen who have not "dropped the ministerial dress," and who 
know nothing of the world — how can they fail to see in the shining light of 
Talmage's example how little genuine contact they have with the souls of 
men. The idea of Talmage was that between the souls of men and lay- 
workers there would not arise this barrier of the cloth. "From this college," 
he says, "we hope to turn upon society, a company of Christian men and 
women who have for ten, twenty, and thirty years been down in the world, 
and who know all its ins and outs. Great work will be done when we send 
Christian merchants to carry the Gospel on 'Change, and into all the life of 
barter." 

This is akin to the idea in his sermon to merchants in which he appeals 
to business men by employing business terms. He says that "religion will 
make headway in hat factories when you can send there, baptized by the 
Spirit, a Christian hatter. We want men in all the occupations, in the name 
of God, to throttle the sins of their own trade. Religion will never conquer 
the plumber's shop, or the mason's wall, or the carpenter's scaffolding, or the 
tinner's roof, or the printer's type-room, until converted plumbers, and ma- 
sons, and carpenters, and printers carry it there. Some men are so profound 
in their education they do not seem qualified for this mission. You can 
not send the Great Eastern up the Penobscot River. Profoundly educated 
men seem to 'draw too much water' to get up such a stream. I have heard 
finely educated men in prayer-meeting talk in sentences of Miltonic affluence, 
yet their words fell dead upon the meeting; but when some poor, uneducated 
man arose, and said, T suppose you fellers think that because I don't know 
anything I haven't no right to speak; but Christ has converted my soul, and 
you know I was the miserablest chap in town; and if God will pardon me, 



THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 



119 



He will pardon you. Come to Jesus! Come nowl' — ^the prayer-meeting 
broke down with religious emotion. It is a grand thing to be accurate in 
speech; but get out with your grammar if you are going to let the lack of 
acquaintance therewith keep a man down when God Almighty tells him to 
get up ! 

GETTING KNOWLEDGE ON THE WING. 

^These men do not now feel prepared for Christian work. Waking up 
at thirty, forty, or fifty years of age, with a desire for usefulness, they are too 
old to begin a regular theological course. Besides that, they have families 
to support. It takes them eight hours every day to earn a livelihood. What 
knowledge they shoot down they must take on the wing, loading the rifle 
while the barrel is yet hot from other discharges. In their undrilled state, 
they rise to talk in prayer-meetings with head down and blushing cheek, as 
though they were talking by sufferance, instead of remembering that they 
have a message from the throne of the eternal God, and that, though men 
howl with contempt, they must utter it. Give these Christian people two 
winters of practical instruction on how to work for Christ, and then the city 
of Brooklyn, from Fulton Ferry to Gowanus, and from the East River to 
the chills-and-fever marshes of South Bushwick, will feel the throb of their 
Christian energy. If betv/een New York and Brooklyn, at six o'clock in 
the evening, there were no ferriage except by one row-boat, the accommoda- 
tion, as compared with the demand for transportation, would not be so small 
as our means of getting the race to heaven is small when compared with 
the millions that ought to go there. 

THE GOSPEL LADDER TOO SHORT. 

''Last winter the Spottswood Hotel in Richmond burned. A man in 
the fourth story swung out of the window and held on, waiting for the fire- 
men to hoist the ladders. A ladder was hoisted, but it did not quite reach 
the man's feet. He held on for a while, and then dropped and perished. 
There is splendid provision in all our churches for the salvation of men, but 
with the Gospel we do not quite reach the masses. They swing wildly for a 
while, and then drop off and die. 



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THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 



"In this college we want to teach men common sense in religious matters. 
While a young man was standing amid rollicking companions, full of mirth 
and repartee, a good Christian man came and asked him, 'What is the first 
step of wisdom?' The young man turned and said, 'The first step of wisdom 
is for every one to mind his own business!' A coarse answer; but it was a 
very abrupt question, considering the place in which it was put." 

We see in the attitude of Talmage here what an advantage to him in his 
work was that broad sympathy which enables him to enter into the point of 
view of the rollicking young man. 

'There are religious peddlers," he says, "who go around making a busi- 
ness of displaying their whole stock of wares in the most obtrusive man- 
ner. It is no time, while an accountant is puzzling his brain with a long 
line of figures, to ask him 'how his account stands with God;' or stop the 
sportsman on the playground, while running between the hunks, and ask 
'whether, in a religious sense, he is running the race set before him.' We 
want tact and adaptation for this work. Some Christians try to catch a 
whale with a fly-rod of hornbeam, and fling a harpoon at a salmon. 

"How few laymen dare to grapple a sharp infidel! A wily unbeliever 
would take many a Christian and twist him around his little finger, or hook 
him to death with the horns of a dilemma, or batter his life out with the 
ninth chapter of Romans. Can it be that our religion is such a weak, beg- 
garly, unreasonable, pusillanimous thing, that at the first assault it should 
run like the Northern troops at Big Bethel? 

"We want private Christians to know how they may stand their ground, 
or go forth with the vehemence of the Bible-dwarf when he accosted the giant, 
saying, 'Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a 
shield; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the 
armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee 
into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I 
will give the carcasses of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls 
of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth ; that all the earth may know that 
there is a God in Israel.' Let me get my sling out! Three times I swing 
it around my head, and down thou goest, oh giant! 



THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 



121 



"FORWARD, THE WHOLE LINE!" 

"The Church of God has been making 'masterly retreats' long enough; 
and the captain of our salvation cries to the armed battalions of the church, 
Forward, the whole line ! 

''We want this institution to qualify people to work amid the wretched- 
ness and crime of the great cities. Is any Christian man so deluded as to 
think that we can overcome these evils by our present way of doing things? 
Where there is one church built there are ten grog-shops established. Where 
one sermon on purity is preached there are five houses of shame built. The 
church has not touched the great evils save with her little finger. The whole 
country is aroused for the trial of five or ten New York municipal scoun- 
drels, while against the influences that make such men possible how little 
effort! 

'Tn this college, under the control of the most eminent philanthropists, 
on whose heads have come down enough blessings to make a heaven out of, 
the people will have an opportunity of knowing what are the desolations of 
our great towns ; and how the hard, cold, filthy pavement, beaten by the feet 
of sin and woe, may be gladdened by the feet of Him who bringeth good 
tidings. At the ratio at which crime and sin have increased in New York 
in the last ten years, in one hundred years there will not be a church left, and 
the city will be one great Blackwell's Island. 

• MORAL GLYCERINE FOR STUPIDITY. 

"Before you and I have the sod pressing our eyelids, we will, under God, 
decide whether our children shall grow up amid the accursed surroundings 
of vice and shame, or come to an inheritance of righteousness. Long, loud, 
bitter will be the curse that scorches our grave if, holding within the church 
to-day enough men and women to save the city, we act the coward or the 
drone. I wish that I could put enough moral glycerine under the conven- 
tionalities and majestic stupidities of the day to blow them to atoms, and that 
then, with fifty thousand men and women from all the churches, knowing 
nothing but Christ and a desire to bring all the world to Him, we might 
move upon the enemy's works. For a little while, heaven would not have 
trumpets enough to celebrate the victory! 



THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 



"We want also to qualify men for street-preaching. There are hundreds 
of thousands of men who will never come to church. The only kind of pulpit 
that will reach them is a dry-goods box or a drayman's cart at the street 
corner. We want hundreds of men every Sabbath to be preaching the Gos- 
pel in our great city parks. There are, in this house to-day, two hundred 
men that ought to be preaching. Under the control of this college, they 
might get the courage and the facility. 'What !' you ask, 'would you let them 
preach without ordination?' I answer, If Conferences and Presbyteries will 
not put their hands upon your head, then I would have you ordained in 
another way. I would take you down into the haunts of suffering and crime 
within ten minutes' walk of our best churches, and there have you tell the 
story of Christ, until men, redeemed from their cups, and women, elevated 
from a life of pollution, and children, whose bare, bleeding feet are on the 
road to death, should be by your instrumentality saved. Then I would have 
these converted suffering ones put their hands of ordination on your head, 
setting you, apart for the holy ministry in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Ah! that would be an ordination as good as 
the laying on of hands by Conferences and Synods — an ordination that would 
be most bright in the day when, 

*' 'Shriveled like a parched scroll, 
The flaming heavens together roll' 

GO PREACH MY GOSPEL. 

"Do you mean to tell me Harlan Page had no right to preach when he 
stood in the Fourteenth Ward of New York, amid scoffs and insults, telling 
the passers-by what good things Christ had done for them, and bringing 
hundreds to God, until, on his death-pillow, he cried out, 'Lord Jesus, come 
quickly! Why wait Thy chariot wheels so long?' Had General Havelock 
no right to preach when, in a heathen temple in India, he placed candles in the 
hands of the gods around about the room, and by that light read the New 
Testament, and exhorted his troops to flee to the stronghold of the Gospel? 
'Go PREACH MY Gospel/ God thuudcrs in your ears to-day ; and woe is unto 
you if you do not preach it, 'Not ready!' Then come here to this college and 



THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE, 



123 



get ready. No excuse will be left you that will not seem a mockery in your 
death-hour, and a ghastly condemnation in the judgment. 

"To-day the Tabernacle Free College for training Christian men and 
women for practical work is launched upon the deep. My Christian friends, 
an opportunity is offered you grander than has ever been offered to the masses 
of the people at any time since Christ came or the world began. 

'In this college you may be prepared to work as Bible-readers, as tract 
distributers, as prayer-meeting exhorters, as street-preachers, as Sabbath- 
school teachers, and for all the fields of Christian work. An opportunity is 
offered you, for the lack of which hundreds of thousands of Christians have 
lived uselessly, and died with their work undone. Nine hundred and ninety- 
nine out of the thousand Christians here to-day, many a time, have said that 
they v/ished they wxre qualified for usefulness. Now you have the opportu- 
nity, let every one take it. 

'Tet the aged come in and seek new qualifications. I know it is almost 
sundown with many of you, but there are a few sheaves yet that may be gath- 
ered. God would have taken you home if your work had all been done. Let 
these middle-aged Christians, who have been gunning with old blunderbusses, 
come and get the rifle of a sharpshooter. Ye who have been hewing away 
with dull axes, come here and put them on the grindstone in this college. 
Here have your questions answered, your doubts removed, your faculties 
developed, your heart fired. I wish that the membership of this church and 
of scores of other churches would, aware of this, the rarest opportunity ever 
offered, march into the college in solid column. 

STENOGBAPHERS TAKE HIS SERMONS. 

'^Through the newspaper press, that stenographically take these words, I 
call upon this great cluster of cities. New York, Newark, Jersey City, and 
Brooklyn, and the surrounding villages, to send to this institution their best 
men and women, that they may here, under some of the first teachers of the 
day, get qualified for glorious usefulness. 

''All sects of Christians, under the chief men of the different denomina- 
tions, will here be taught to go shoulder to shoulder; and the Baptist will, for 



124 



THE TABERNACLE LAY COLLEGE. 



the time, lorget his immersion, and the Episcopalian his Liturgy, and the 
Methodist his anxious-seat, and the Presbyterian his Westminster Assembly, 
while all together will lift the one battle-shout of 'Jesus forever !' On His 
brow be all the garlands; at His feet cast down all the crowns; in His ear 
pour all the doxologies. Hallelujah! amen! Hallelujah! amen!" 

Even yet we feel in those words, stenographically taken by the press of 
that cluster of cities which is now Greater New York, the tremendous emo- 
tional force which made Talmage great. The man's body lies quiet in the 
grave, but he so stamped his soul into the mind of his time, that even now we 
hear his ringing shout of Hallelujah! Nothing could resist that burning 
enthusiasm, that true and tense-drawn wnll. That particular Lay College has 
ceased to be, but the idea of it, like an immortal soul passing to some new 
reincarnation, survives the dead body and lives in the world to-day. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE BURNING OF THE BROOKLYN TABERNACLES. 

REGARDED AS A BLESSING BY TALMAGE QUICK REBUILDING OF THE LARGEST 

PROTESTANT CHURCH IN THE WORLD THE ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE AN 

EXAMPLE OF TALMAGEAN METAPHOR TALMAGE's OWN DESCRIPTION OF 

THE CONFLAGRATION THE FIRE OF THE SPIRIT 

The First Tabernacle, the story of the building of which we gave in 
another chapter, was burned on Sunday morning, December 22, 1872. \ 

The fire started from a defective furnace and broke out just before the 
hour of morning service. While it was in progress the trustees, with Dr. 
Talmage, held a meeting in the house of Major B. R. Corwin, on State street, 
near by, and decided to hire the Academy of Music for future services. Dur- 
ing the meeting invitations came from some ten pastors offering the use of 
their churches to the Tabernacle congregation. Mr. Beecher's was the first 
to arrive and that evening the Tabernacle congregation met in Plymouth 
Church. Mr. Beecher hospitably invited his own congregation to stay at home 
and he himself participated with Dr. Talmage in the service. In this fire was 
destroyed the organ originally built for the Boston Coliseum, which the 
Tabernacle had purchased. Work was immediately begun on a new Taber- 
nacle on the old spot, larger, more beautiful and more stable than the last. 
This building was 157 feet 6 inches by 115 feet and had seats for four thou- 
sand people, with standing room for pretty nearly half as many more. The 
building was of brick and stone and cost $123,800. It was dedicated on Sun- 
day, February 22, 1874, the Rev. Dr. Byron Sunderland of Washington 
preaching and Mr. Beecher taking part in the services. That occasion prob- 
ably drew the biggest crowd which had then ever been seen in a Brooklyn 
church. It was estimated at the time at six thousand and required police 
supervision as much as a bridge crush does. The interior of this Tabernacle 

125 



126 BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE, 



was like the first one described, but larger. In it Dr. Talmage's reputation 
grew and flourished, his sermons preached there being published in book and 
newspaper form until he was the most widely known and best paid clergyman 
Christendom ever saw. During the occupancy of this building two plans in 
which Dr. Talmage was deeply interested failed. One was the free pew sys- 
tem of which he was one of the pioneers and with which the Tabernacle was 
no more successful than many churches which tried it soon afterward! The 
Tabernacle was supported by the envelope system until the returns proved 
unsatisfactory and the church was obliged to go back to pew auctions. 

BXTRNIITG OF THE SECOND TABERNACLE. 

The second Tabernacle was burned on Sunday, October 27, 1889. The 
fire started about 3 o'clock in the morning and was supposed to have been 
caused by lightning. Dr. Talmage was just ready to start on a trip through 
the Holy Land as a preparation for writing a life of Christ, but he delayed 
his departure several weeks until he had seen his congregation housed in the 
Academy of Music and had set on foot plans for the collection of funds to 
build a new Tabernacle. The first of these was an appeal to all readers of Dr. 
Talmage's sermons, issued while the embers of the burned building were still 
hot, to contribute. This netted about $4,000. Subscriptions were also col- 
lected through a religious journal, of which Dr. Talmage was editor, and 
the lot for the new Tabernacle was purchased at Clinton and Greene avenues, 
one of the quietest and most fashionable sections of the city. Then began 
probably one of the most turbulent and vexing periods of Dr. Talmage's 
career. The new Tabernacle was of brick and brown stone, a massive and 
expensive building. A large part of the money needed for its construction was 
secured by loan from Russell Sage, whose security in addition to the mortgage 
on the Tabernacle was said to include heavy insurance policies on Dr. Tal- 
mage's life. These funds were not enough, however, and the progress of the 
new building was attended by the filing of a builder's lien, suits and unpleasant 
and annoying complications. The cornerstone was laid February 10, 1890, 
just a week after Dr. Talmage's return from the Holy Land. During the 
building the courts were applied to and a mortgage of $250,000 was placed 



BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. 127 



upon the property, Russell Sage taking $125,000 of the bonds. The building 
was dedicated on April 26, 1891, and the contributions of the day amounted 
to $22,000. The chief difference between the new building and predecessor, 
aside from the greater external beauty of the latter, was that the new Taber- 
nacle was higher, having two galleries and a seating capacity of 4,000. The 
horseshoe curve was reproduced and there were no bad seats. The most 
striking ornament was a tablet set in the wall at the right of the platform 
containing four stones which Dr. Talmage brought from the Holy Land. 
Two were from Mount Sinai, representing the two tables of the Mosaic law, 
and one each from Mars' Hill and Calvary. The building and lot cost about 
$300,000. In 1892 the Tabernacle reported over 7,000 members, many more 
than any other Protestant church in the city, and an increase of 3,000 in a 
year. 

THE TABERNACLE AGAIN" BITRNEEF. 

Destruction by fire, a fate which had followed the Tabernacles so persis- 
tently since Dr. Talmage assumed his pastorate in Brooklyn, again came on 
the morning of Sunday, May 13, 1894. It was just after the conclusion of 
the morning service, while the great congregation yet lingered in the neigh- 
borhood and before Dr. Talmage had left the building, that the fire started 
near the great organ. The fire department was summoned in all force and 
dispatch, but without avail, for before the sun went down the third Tabernacle 
and the last, as events proved, was completely destroyed. Not only was the 
church building burned, but the Regent Hotel next door and private property 
as well, bringing the loss up to over one million of dollars. 

The fire proved the crowning blow to the trials of the Tabernacle con- 
gregation, and ultimately led to the departure of Dr. Talmage for other fields 
of work at the national capital. 

The fires which destroyed the Tabernacles were interpreted by Dr. Tal- 
mage, not as his enemies interpreted them, as a visitation from God, but as 
a blessing in disguise. His faith that they were so made them become so. 
The first building of wood and iron was replaced by a more spacious and 
beautiful one of brick and stone, one seating five thousand people, the largest 
Protestant church in the entire world. 



128 BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE, 



The resolute character of Talmage is shown in the quick energy with 
which he declared the supposed catastrophe to be a piece of good luck, and 
then proceeded to convert it into such. 

The philosophy with which he accepted the destruction of his first Taber- 
nacle was for a long time a subject of comment in Brooklyn, and was recalled 
and rehashed with a purpose to which the honest doctor could not be blind, 
at each successive fire. The first fire broke out on a Sunday morning, so 
the entire congregation saw the burning of the church, and there was a great 
deal of weeping and loud lamenting, and before the arrival of Talmage many 
exclamations of ''Oh, poor Mr. Talmage! What will Mr. Talmage say?" 

When Talmage arrived there was not much left of the Tabernacle but 
ashes. He stood for a minute or so, gazing at the clouds of smoke and steam 
arising from the ruins and filling the sky. No one dared to offer consolation, 
or to speak before the man who was regarded as the chief mourner. 

"Well," said Mr. Talmage, at last, ''that building never was big enough. 
Now that it's out of the way, we must set about the work of building a larger 
Tabernacle — and I have no doubt that the people of the United States will 
help us." _ , 

Talmage liad not miscalculated or undervalued the advertising effect 
of the fire. The publication of the news of the fire brought not only thou- 
sands of letters of sympathy, but all kinds of offers of pecuniary assistance, 
and almost before the ashes of the first Tabernacle were cold plans were 
made for erecting the largest Protestant church in America. 

MEMORIALS TOE. M0N1EY. 

When the rebuilding of the Tabernacle was under consideration, and 
ways and means of raising money were being discussed. Dr. Talmage wrote 
to several rich men who had lost relatives by death, and made the proposal 
that in exchange for a gift of $100,000 the new church should be named the 
So-and-So Memorial church. The publication of this proposal attracted a 
great deal of adverse criticism. There was at the same time a great deal of 
talk about the laggard state of subscriptions to the Grant monument. 

"My way is the best way," said Talmage, seizing the occasion aptly, and 



MOTHER, HOME AND JESUS. 

Painted By F. Goodall. 

■ut Mary kept all these things, and pondered tliem in her heart.— Luke il. la, 



THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. 

Painted By Girard. 

And when the parents brought in the child Jesus, . . . Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God. 
Luke ii. 27, 28. 



JESUS IN PRAYER. 

Painted by O. Mengelberg. 

And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.— Matt. xxi. 22. 



THE TRANSFIGURATION. 

Painted by Raphael. 

Jesus taketh with him Peter and James and John, and leadeth them up into a high mountain apart by them- 
selves, and lie was transfigured before them.— Mark Ix. 2. 




JESUS WITH THE CHILDRtN. 

Painted by F. Kirchbach. 

■ Savior like a sheoiierd lead us. Much we need thy tenderest care." 




JESUS AND THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 

Paint id By Ittenbach. 

Jesus saith unto her. I that si)eak unto thee am He.— John iv 26 







JESUS IN PRAYER. PamtecT By Meyer. 



Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, That calls me from a world of care, 
And bids me, at my Father's throne. Make all my wants and wishes known! 

And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to 
God— Luke vi. 12. 




I 

I 

i 

i 




THE ASCENSION. 

Painted by Coletti. 



And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.— Luke 
xxiv.5i. 



THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 

Painted by B. Plockhorst. 

And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus. And it came to pass, that Jesus him- 
self drew near, and went with them.— Luke xxiv. 13 15. 




JESUS TAKING LEAVE OF HIS MOTHER. 

Painted by B. Plockhorst. 

When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing hy whom he loved, he saith nnto his mother, 
Woman, belinld thy son !— John xix. 26. 



JESUS INVITES ALL TO COME. 

Painted By C. Block. 

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.— Matt xi. 28. 




THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. 

Painted By W. A. ao^guereau. 

Wben he arose, Ue took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt.— Matt, il- 14 




Painted By B. Plockhorst. 

Suffer little children, and forbia inem not to cnmo unto me 



BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. 145 



turning aside criticism with his usual skill. 'If they had started a Grant 
Memorial church or cathedral, the money would have been all subscribed 
long ago," and he was right. But the feehngs of his parishioners were 
spared, and money was obtained without having to saddle the Tabernacle 
with the names of the departed relatives of millionaires. 

FASHION OPPOSES THE TABEilNACLE ^'RABBLE." 

When it was proposed to build a new Tabernacle on The Hill, one of 
the fashionable residence quarters of Brooklyn, there was a wild protest 
from property owners, who went to extremes in their opposition, and turned 
popular sympathy against them by alluding publicly to those who attended 
the Talmage services as the "Tabernacle rabble." Nothing that ever hap- 
pened in the City of Churches, excepting perhaps the Beecher case, aroused 
^more feeHng than this attack. The leaders of the Tabernacle were highly 
indignant, and called on their pastor to make public answer to the impHed 
accusation, otherwise it might interfere with the supply of capital for the 
new place of worship. 

"Why, no," said Dr. Talmage, "I don't care what they call us. My 
regular congregation certainly cannot be the rabble. But my church is 
crowded Sunday after Sunday by people who, take it from year's end to 
year's end, will probably represent all the other churches and creeds in New 
York and Brooklyn, whose members honor us by attending our services 
frequently, especially when they have visitors from the country. The Taber- 
nacle congregation is not the Tabernacle rabble, and has never been so 
called. Let the brethren of the other churches look to it!" 

FIIJDS BLESSING IN DISASTER 

The anniversary discourse which he pronounced is to a certain extent 
autobiographical, as it is based upon an event which so closely and personally 
affected the preacher. No one can better his description of the event itself, 
and for this reason we quote his own words. They show also the spirit in 
which the fire was received by preacher and congregation, and offer an 
example of how all things were grist to his mill of metaphor. The fire is 
used as one great metaphor throughout the discourse, and in this is very 



146 BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. 



characteristic of his method. He seeks ever a basis of fact which is already 
known and interesting to his audience. We quote from the Series of 
Sermons: 

''Men had better listen when God speaks in wave, or wind, or storm, or 
earthquake, or conflagration. God spoke to Job out of the hurricane; to 
Lisbon, out of the earthquake; to both continents by the burning of the 
Austria in mid-ocean, the driving against Mars Head of the Atlantic, the 
awful going down of the Ville du Havre; while He spoke to our own con- 
gregation last December, through the burning of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. 
God's most vehement utterances are in flames of fire. The most tremen- 
dous lesson He ever gave to New York was in the conflagration of 1835; 
to Chicago, in the conflagration of 1871 ; to Boston, iii the conflagration 
of 1872; to our own congregation, in the fiery downfall of our beloved place 
of worship. 

GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION" OF THE FIRE. 

"The day was full of merciless frost. Things cracked with the cold. Man 
and beast felt it was a day to have warm shelter. The bell had rung for 
religious service, and the families of our congregation had started for the 
accustomed place of worship, some with thanksgivings that they must needs 
offer, some with sorrows that they must needs have healed, all of them with 
souls that needed more preparation for the judgment-day. A black flag 
of smoke against the sky, and the rush of the hose-carriages made us ask, 
'Where is it? what ward? Horrible to be burned out of house and home on 
such a day as this!' Some one says, Tt is in the direction of the Taberna- 
cle. Ay, it is the church!' and there is a rush past the streets crying. 
Tire! fire!' And instead of sitting down in placid worship that day, our 
congregation, joined by other congregations on the streets, stood in the 
presence of God before the altar of a burning church. Many wrung their 
hands and thought of the sacred scenes in which there they had mingled — 
the baptisms, the weddings, the burials, the communion-days, the scenes of 
revival, the deliverances, and the victories. All efforts at extinguishment 
seemed to fail. The great organ, as the flames roared through its pipes, 



BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE, 



147 



played its own requiem, and the walls came down with a crash that made 
the earth tremble. Some saw in that nothing but unmitigated disaster, 
while others of us heard the voice of God as from heaven, sounding through 
the crackling thunder of that awful day, saying, 'He shall baptize you with 
the Holy Ghost and with fire!' The Lord has fulfilled the prophecy. That 
which threatened to be entire extinguishment has really been an unmistakable 
benediction. 

WORK OF REBUILDING. 

'Through many self-denials, and through kindness and practical help 
on all sides, our building hastens toward completion. Through a panic that 
has staggered the land, and made some of the noblest enterprises come 
to a dead halt, the work has gone gradually but surely on, and we shall 
soon have a house to dedicate to the Lord, a house marvelous for capacity, 
and for beauty, and for strength, in which men and women for many genera- 
tions will assemble to worship God. Added to that, while we were in the 
wilderness, the Lord has descended mightily in a Pentecostal blessing, and 
a great multitude have cried out after God, and there has been a rush for 
the cross, and a wailing over sin, and a jubilant shout over pardon such as 
you and I have never before heard. 'Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for 
He is good, for His mercy endureth forever!' Out of darkness He brings 
light. Out of trouble He brings assurance. Out of defeat He brings 
victory. Out of smoking, crackling, roaring, devastating calamity, 'He 
baptizes us with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.' 

propose this morning, so far as God may help me, to draw out the 
analogy between these two baptisms — the baptism of last December and 
the baptism of this December. 

BLESSINGS COME SUDDENLY. 

"First, I remark they were both sudden. We all felt that whatever else 
^ighi go down, that Tabernacle never could. We thought it fire-proof. 
When on that cold December day that building was in flames, there was on 
every countenance in the street amazement. Sudden as sudden could be! 
So has it been with the other baptism — the baptism of the Holy Ghost. 



148 BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. 

The spiritual fire broke out here on Sabbath night, and, while hundreds 
were rising and asking for prayers, there was a look of amazement on the 
faces of the people, and some aged . Christians wondered what it all meant. 
The first baptism — suddenly. The next baptism — suddenly. So nearly 
always does the Spirit come. So it came when Jonathan Edwards preached 
in Northampton, and John Livingstone in Scotland, and William Tennant 
preached in Monmouth, and Dr. Finlay preached in Baskinridge, and Net- 
tleton, and Daniel Baker, and Truman Osborne, and Mr. Earle, and Edward 
Payson Hammond preached everywhere. Almost always the blessing came 
suddenly. It has been especially so in our midst. In a night family altars 
have been reared in houses where before there was no prayer; infidels per- 
suaded of the truth of Christianity in five minutes;. children going at three 
o'clock to the Sabbath-schools unsaved coming home Christians at five 
o'clock; men coming into these services to make merry with the anxiety 
of those who were seeking after God, themselves at the close rising for 
prayer; and many of the old passages of Scripture that seemed to lie 
dormant in the hearts of God's people have flashed up with unwonted and 
overwhelming power. 

WHITEFIELD ON BLACIOIEATH. 

"Whitefield was once preaching on Blackheath, and a man and his wife 
coming from market saw the crowd and went up to hear. Whitefield 
was saying something about what happened eighteen hundred years ago, 
and the man said to his wife, 'Come, Mary, we will not stop any longer. 
He is talking about something that took place more than eighteen hundred 
years ago. What's that to us ?' But they were fascinated. They could not 
get away. The truth of God came to their hearts. When they were home, 
they took down the Bible and said, Ts it possible that these old truths have 
been here so long and we have not known it?' Ah! it was in the flash of 
God's Spirit on Blackheath that they were saved — -the Spirit coming might- 
ily, and suddenly, and overwhelmingly upon them. So it was that God's 
Spirit came to Andrew Fuller, and James Harvey, and the Earl of Rochester, 
and Bishop Latimer----suddenly, So it came to multitudes in this assem? 



BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. 149 



blage, both the baptism of fire and the baptism of the Holy Ghost. A father 
was enraged whose child was interested in religious things many years ago, 
because she would go to the place of worship. He forbade her going; but 
she slipped out when he was not watching. He said, There now, she has 
gone to the meeting;' and he went to the meeting. She was kneeling at the 
altar. He put his arms around her with indignation to carry her out, when 
she cried, 'Father, you are too late; I have found Jesus T And so there 
have been those among us who would like to have kept Christ out of their 
families, but they came not soon enough to succeed. It is too late, father; 
your child has already found Jesus. 

FIKE AND GOD'S LOVE IKRESISTIBLE. 

"But I remark again, the analogy between these two baptisms — the baptism 
of fire and the baptism of the Holy Ghost — is in the fact that they were both 
irresistible. Notwithstanding all our boasted machinery and organization for 
putting out fires, the efforts that were made did not repulse the flames last 
December one single instant. Having begun, they kept on more and more 
triumphantly, clapping their hands over the destroyed building. There was 
a great sound of fire-trumpets and brave men walking on hot walls ; but the 
flames were balked not an instant. So it has been with the Holy Spirit mov- 
ing through the hearts of this people. Why, there have been aged men who 
for forty or fifty years resisted the truth who have surrendered ! There have 
been men here who have sworn that the religion of Jesus Christ should never 
come into their households; they and their children kneel now at the same 
altar. We have all felt it. Formalists trying to put out the spiritual fire have 
only had their trouble for their pains. It has gone on. It is going on now', 
conquering pride, and worldliness, and sin ; and I pray it may keep on until 
it has swept everything before it, and there shall be in every household an 
altar, and in every heart a throne for the blessed Jesus. Go on, great bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost as with fire ! 

CONSUMING FIBE FOU SIN. 

'Tn the days of revival in England, when John Wesley was preaching, 
everywhere scoffers would mimic his preaching, and one man thought it was 



150 BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE, 



very smart to gather an audience, and stand up with a Bible, and take John 
Wesley's favorite text, 'Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish;' and 
he preached — he, the scoffer — to an audience of scoffers, until the . trutG 
rebounded on his own heart and he cried for mercy, and the truth over- 
whelmed the hearts of his hearers, and they cried for mercy, and instead of 
being an audience of mockers it became an audience of seekers. Oh! this 
is the power of God, this is the wisdom of God unto salvation. Both baptisms 
— the one of fire and the one of the Holy Ghost — irresistible. 

"i remark again, that I find the analogy in the fact that both baptisms were 
consuming. Did you ever see any more thorough work than was done by 
that fire last December? The strongest beams turned to ashes. The iron 
cracked, curled up, and was destroyed. The work of the flames consum- 
mate. So it has been with the Holy Ghost: it has been a consuming fire 
amidst the sins and the habits of those who despise God. How many have 
had their transgressions utterly consumed! Some who were victims of bad 
habits have had their chains broken off. Down at the club-room and down at 
the saloon, they wonder why these people do not come any more. Ah ! in- 
stead of the laughter of fools, which is like the crackling of thorns under a 
pot, they have come to that religion which is joy here and hosanna forever; 
and after a man has set down once at the Lord's banquet, he has no more 
patience with the swine's diet. When the revival, two years ago, swept 
through the city of Lawrence, at the West, it was stated to be a fact that the 
gin saloons lost fifty per cent of their business. So may it always be — the 
Spirit of God consuming the dissipations of men! That Spirit has gone 
through the hearts and lives of many who sit before me, like fire through 
stubble. They have been swept by the purifying' flames. Both baptisms have 
been consuming. 

MELTING POWER OE SALVATION. 

"Again, I find an analogy in the two baptisms, because they both were melt- 
ing. If you examined the bars and bolts, and plumbing work of the Taber- 
nacle after it went down, you know it was a melting process. The things that 
seemed to have no relation to each other adjoined — flowed together. So it 
has been with the Spirit of God, melting down all asperities and unbrotherli- 



BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. 151 



ness. Heart has flowed out toward heart. It has been a melting process. If 
there is anything that our city churches need, it is melting. There are a thou- 
sand icicles hanging to the eaves of our city churches where they are two 
icicles hanging to the eaves of the country churches. W e are so afraid we will 
get acquainted with somebody that will not do us honor ! The great want of 
the Church to-day is a thaw — a thaw. Oh, that the Lord God would rise up 
and melt down the freezing conventionalities of his Church ! I think that that 
fire of last December and this spiritual fire of this December have melted us 
until we flow together in Christian sympathy, and harmony, and love, and 
that we can now join hands in one great family circle as a church, and sing as 
we never sang before : 

" 'Before our Father's throne 
We pour our ardent prayers ; 
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, 
Our comforts and our cares. 

'The glorious hope revives 

Our courage by the way. 
While each in expectation lives, 

And longs to see the day.' 

HOT AND TREMENDOUS WORK. 

"But I have, on this anniversary of the burning of the Brooklyn Taber- 
nacle, to say that we have not, as a church, yet entered upon the mission for 
which God has baptized us — first with fire, and now with the Holy Ghost. 
We need to put forth on a more earnest mission than we have ever entered 
upon. God evidently does not intend us for smooth work. He has rocked 
us in a very rough cradle. Ofttimes has this church been assaulted in various 
ways, and if there are any wdio expect to have a smooth time and an easy 
pathway, they had better wake up from the delusion and get out of this 
church. If God baptized us with fire, it is because He means to fit us for hot 
and tremendous work. If you are afraid of fatigue, and afraid of persecution, 
and afraid of opposition, you had better not train in this battalion, for I have 
no quiet encampment to offer you by still waters ; but rather to tell you of a 



152 



BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. 



forced march, hard fighting, and a bayonet charge. I beheve God means us 
to go forth and proclaim an earnest, uncompromising, out and out, straight- 
forward, revolutionary, old-fashioned Gospel, that believes in repentance and 
regeneration, in glory and in perdition. But, my friends, in order to enter 
upon that work we want still more vigorous baptism of the Holy Ghost. We 
want that Spirit to come down in all our families with His arousing, melting, 
illuminating, saving presence ; and I believe that then the influences which we 
have already had in the way of a blessing will be only as a spark compared 
with the great conflagration of religious enthusiasm and zeal we shall feel 
here. 

WORK WANTS EVERYONE. 

"But, my friends, when is this work to begin? If .you, as a private Chris- 
tian, and I, as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, have some work to do, 
when shall we begin it? Now, and here. Oh, men and women of the world! 
do you not feel to-day the baptism of the Holy Ghost? Is there not some- 
thing in the passing of the seasons, something in this last Sabbath of the year, 
something in the tramp of your pulses, something in the solemn surroundings 
of this morning, something in the wave of influence that comes in upon your 
soul, to make you realize that this may be your last chance for heaven ? Miss 
it now, and you miss it forever. Do you not see how swiftly your Sabbaths 
are going? Do you not see how the years of your life are rushing into a 
great eternity? The year 1873 has already landed thousands and tens of 
thousands of souls beyond the reach of all mercy. The book with twelve 
chapters made up of the twelve months is about finished by the recording 
angel, and he has his hands on the lids of that book, about to close it for the 
last reckoning. Oh, my hearer ! if you turn your back upon your best inter- 
ests, if your final opportunity for redemption disappear, if the rushing wing 
that passes us is the wing of the retreating spirit, if this be the moment of 
awful calamity — the downfall of an immortal soul — then you will see a con- 
flagration compared with which that of last December was child's play. It 
will be w^hen the Lord shall be revealed from heaven with flaming fire, to take 
vengeance upon those who know not God and obey not the Gospel of our 
Lord Jesus Christ! From that conflagration of last December we shall re- 



BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. 153 



cover; but the soul that goes down into that final conflagration shall never 
recuperate. That fire in December last continued only three or four hours, 
and on the following day even the smoke ceased to curl up in the frosty air ; 
but that soul that- rejects Christ shall go into a fire that shall never be 
quenched, "and the smoke of its torment ascendeth up forever and forever." 
May God Almighty through Jesus Christ keep us out of that! Whatever 
misfortune and disaster may come upon us in this world, let it come; but 
God forbid that any of us should lose heaven ! We can not afford to lose our 
soul. Save that, we have saved every thing. Lose that, we have lost every 
thing. Instead of the baptism that consumes, oh that we might this morning, 
penitently, believingly, prayerfully, joyfully receive the baptism that saves! 

SOUGHT GOD AT THE FIRE. 

I suppose that some of you know there were persons who stood in the pres- 
ence of that burning church last December who for the first time sought after 
God. They said then to themselves ; indeed they arose in the prayer-meetings 
afterward, and said : 'When I stood in the presence of that building, I was 
reminded as never before that there was nothing fire-proof, that there was 
nothing on earth certain, and there and then, in the presence of that devasta- 
tion and ruin, I resolved that I would be the Lord's, and I have kept my 
promise. I have given my heart to Jesus.' Oh! if that was the result in 
some souls on that cold Sabbath day, now, when this morning I rehearse the 
scene, shall it not be, under God's Spirit, the means of bringing some of you 
to Christ? You have tried this world; you have been drinking out of the 
fountains of its pleasure ; you have tried in January, February, March, April, 
May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and now nearly 
to the close of December, and tell me frankly, oh man of the world ! is there 
anything this side Christ and heaven that can give solace, and peace, and con- 
tentment to your immortal nature? No; you know there is nothing. You 
have tried the world and it has failed you. It is a cheating world. It is a 
lying world. It is a dying world. Oh, seek after God to-day, and be at 
peace with Him !" 

Part only of the prophecy of Talmage in this sermon was to be fulfilled. 



154 



BURNING OF BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. 



They were, indeed, ''to have a house to dedicate to the Lord, a house marvel- 
ous for capacity, and for beauty, and for strength;" but in it "men and women 
for many generations" were not, as he supposed, ''to assemble to worship 
God" — neither in that one which they were then building and which they 
dedicated on Washington's birthday, 1874, nor that other one, which they 
dedicated, after so many set-backs, on April 26th, 1891. The last Tabernacle 
perished in the flame, melting and consuming then and forever all material 
and visible signs and evidences of Talmage's Brooklyn ministrations. Now 
his spirit, too, has left the earth, and the only Tabernacles of his that remain 
on earth are the hearts that are better for his life and work. 



CHAPTER IX 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 

MARY AVERY^ OF BROOKLYN, TALMAGE^S FIRST WIFE — THE TRAGEDY OF HER 

DEATH IN 1862 SUSAN C. WHITTEMORE HIS SECOND WIFE THEIR SIX 

CHILDREN^ FRANK, JESSIE, MAY, ETC. READERS OF TALMAGE MADE TO 

FEEL PERSONALLY ACQUAINTED WITH THEM GLIMPSES OF HIS HOME 

LIFE AT BELLEVILLE, AND AT HIS LATER COUNTRY HOME AT EAST- 
HAMPTON, L. I. 

Dr. Talmage was married three times. His first wife, by whom he had 
one child, was Miss Mary Avery of Brooklyn, whom he tragically lost in 
1862, she being drowned in the Schuylkill river. His second wife was Miss 
Susan C. Whittemore, also of Brooklyn, and with her he lived many years 
and reared a family of six children, in his Brooklyn home at i South Oxford 
street and at Easthampton, Long Island. The city home was a fine brown 
Stone house overlooking Fort Greene, and was filled with rare works of art 
and with precious souvenirs of travel from all parts of the earth. His country 
home at Easthampton, which he called Woodside, he describes in a passage 
quoted by us in the chapter on Love as the Motor Power of Greatness. It 
inspires one of the best pieces of writing he ever did. It was at this East- 
hampton where he delivered an address on the occasion of the two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the town on August 24, 1899. 

The third burning of the Tabernacle, on May 13, 1894, was a severe 
shock to Mrs. Talmage, and it is said that she never fully recovered from 
its effects. She became ill, and while she apparently recovered her health 
sufficiently to make a trip abroad, she was eventually obliged to seek treat- 
ment in a sanitarium at Dansville, N. Y. There she died on the morning 
of August 5, 1895. Mrs. Talmage was about 50 years old and was married 

to the doctor in 1864. She was his second wife and had played no small 

ISS 



156 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



part in carrying out his ideas of philanthropic work and making his home 
what it was. 

Dr. Talmage married on January 22, 1898, Mrs. Elmora McCutcheon- 
Collier, widow of Charles W. Collier, only son of Judge F. H. CoUier of Pitts- 
burg, Pa. The ceremony was performed at the McCutcheon home, in Alle- 
gheny, Pa., by the Rev. Dr. W. J. Robinson, pastor of the First United 
Presbyterian Church. 

His bride, now his widow, was a wealthy woman whose husband, during 
his life, was a leading member of the local bar. Mrs. ColHer had a daughter 
by her first husband. Miss Rebecca Collier, now about 22 years of age. Dr. 
Talmage's own children are Frank De Witt Talmage, pastor of the Jefferson 
Park Presbyterian Church in Chicago ; Jessie Talmage Smith, wife of a New 
York merchant; May Talmage Mangan, wife of a New York broker; Edith 
Talmage Donnan, whose husband is a prominent business man in Richmond, 
Va., and Maud and Daisy Talmage. For a decade Dr. Talmage resided in 
Washington. His face and figure could oftentimes be distinguished in the 
gay crowds that throng the capital city. He enjoyed society and managed 
to devote time to these duties as well as to work. 

Concerning the Schuylkill river tragedy, Talmage once spoke as follows, 
giving a most vivid picture of the terrible scene, and denouncing with all 
his soul the malignant lie that had been circulated by his enemies concerning 
the event: 

SLANDER CONCERNING THE DROWNING OF MRS. TALMAGE. 

'There is a falsehood," says he in this sermon, "which strikes a different 
key, for it strikes the sanctity of my home, and when I tell the story the fair- 
minded men and women and children of the land will be indignant. I will 
read it, so that if any one want to copy it they can. It has been stated over 
and over again in private circles, and hinted in newspapers, until tens of 
thousands of people have heard the report, that sixteen or seventeen years 
ago I went sailing on the Schuylkill river with my wife and her sister, who 
was my sister-in-law; that the boat capsized, and, having the opportunity of 
saving either my wife or her sister, I let my wife drown and saved the sister, 
I marrying her in sixty days. 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



157 



"I propose to nail the infamous lie on the forehead of every villain, man 
or woman, who shall uitter it again, and to invoke the law to help me. One 
beautiful summer morning, my own sister, Clara Talmage Whitenack, and 
her daughter Mary being on a visit tO' us in Philadelphia, I proposed we go 
to Fairmount Park and make it pleasant for them. With my wife and child, 
she being a Httle daughter, my sister Sarah and her daughter, I started for 
Fairmount. Having just moved to Philadelphia, I was ignorant of the 
topography of the suburb. Passing along the river, I saw a rowboat and 
proposed a row. I hired a boat and we got in. We did not know anything 
of the dam across the river, and, unwarned by the keeper of the boat of any 
danger, I pulled straight for the brink, suspecting nothing until we saw 
some one wildly waving on the shore as though there was danger. I looked 
and lo! we were already in a current of the dam. With a terror that you 
cannot imagine, I tried to back the boat, but in vain. We went over. The 
boat capsized. My wife instantly disappeared and was drawn under the 
dam, from which her body was not brought until days after; I not able to 
swim a stroke, my niece hanging on to me, my sister Sarah clinging to the 
other side of the boat. A boat from shore rescued lis. After an hour of 
effort to resuscitate my child, who was nine-tenths dead — and I can see her 
blackened body yet rolling over the barrel, such as is used in restoring the 
drowned — she breathed again. A carriage came up, and, leaving my wife 
in the bottom of the Schuylkill river and with my little girl in semi-con- 
sciousness, blood issuing from her nostrils and lips, wrapped in a shawl on 
my lap, and with my sister Sarah and her child in the carriage, we rode to 
our desolate home. Since the world was created a more ghastly and agoniz- 
ing calamity never happened. And that is the scene over which some min- 
isters of the gospel, and men and women pretending to be decent, have 
made sport. 

''My present wife was not witliin a hundred miles of the place. So far 
as being sisters, the two were entire strangers. They never heard of each 
other, and not until nine months after the tragedy on the Schuylkill did I 
even know of the existence of my present wife. Nine months after that 
cal^amity on tb^ Schuylkill she wB§ intxQimpi tp by my hrothpr, thf R^v, 



158 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE, 



Goyn famiage, now of Port Jervis, New York. My first wife's name was 
Mary R. Avery, a member of the Reformed Church, Harrison street, South 
Brooklyn, where there are many hundreds of people who could tell the 
story. My present wife, I say, was not within a hundred miles of the spot. 
Her name was Susan Whittemore, and she was a member of the Reformed 
Church in Greenpoint, where multitudes could tell the story. Multitudes 
of people on the banks of the Schuylkill who witnessed my landing on that 
awful day of calamity, and hundreds of people within an hour's walk of 
this place, and who knew Mary Avery, and hundreds of people in Green- 
point, Brooklyn, who knew my present wife — Susan Whittemore — ^what do 
you think, husbands and wives, fathers- and mothers, editors and reporters, 
of a lie like that manufactured out of whole cloth? I have never spoken of 
this subject before and I never shall again, but I give fair notice that if any 
two responsible witnesses will give me the name of any responsible person 
after this, affirming this slander, I will pay the informant $ioo, and I will put 
upon the criminal, the loathsome wretch who utters it, the full force of the 
law." 

GLIMPSES OF TAUVtAGE'S HOME LIFE. 

It is pleasant to turn from this tragedy, which cast a shadow upon the 
life of Talmage, to the charming glimpses of his home life which he gives us 
in the gossipy autobiographical papers entitled ^'Around the Tea Table." 
Here he makes us feel personally acquainted with his wife and with his 
children, May and Jessie, Frank and Edith. 

On the occasion of ''moving," he steps into the nursery for a last look. 
"The crib is gone," says he, "and the doll-babies and the block-houses, but 
the echoes have not yet stopped galloping; May's laugh, and Edith's glee, 
and Frank's shout, as he urged the hobby-horse to its utmost speed, both 
heels struck into the flanks, till out of his glass eye the horse seemed to say: 
'Do that again, and I will throw you to the other side of the trundle-bed!' 
Farewell, old house! It did not suit us exactly, but thank God for the good 
times we had in it!" 

Of his summer house at Easthampton, the doctor gives us the following 
description : "Our summer house is a cottage at Easthampton, Long Island, 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



159 



Overlooking the sea. Seventeen vessels in sight, schooners, clippers, her- 
maphrodite brigs, steamers, great craft and small. Wonder where they come 
from, and where they are going to, and who is aboard? Just enough clover- 
tops to sweeten the briny air into the most deUghtful tonic. We do not 
know the geological history of this place, but imagine that the rest of Long 
Island is the discourse of which Easthampton is the peroration. There are 
enough bluffs to relieve the dead level, enough grass to clothe the hills, 
enough trees to drop the shadow, enough society to keep one from inanity, 
and enough quietude to soothe twelve months of perturbation. The sea 
hums us to sleep at night, and fills our dreams with intimations of the land 
where the harmony is like 'the voice of many waters.' In smooth weather 
the billows take a minor key; but when the storm gives them the pitch, 
they break forth with the clash and uproar of an overture that fills the 
heavens and makes the beach tremble. Strange that that which rolls per- 
petually and never rests itself should be a psalm of rest to others! With 
these sands of the beach we help fill the hour-glass of life. Every moment 
of the day there comes in over the waves a flotilla of joy and rest and 
health, and our piazza is the wharf where the stevedores unburden their 
cargo. We have sunrise with her bannered hosts in cloth of gold, and moon- 
rise with her innumerable helmets and shields and swords and ensigns of 
silver, the morning and the night being the two buttresses from which are 
swung a bridge of cloud suspended on strands of sunbeam, all the glories 
of the sky passing to and fro with airy feet in silent procession. 

"We have wandered far and wide, but found no such place to rest in. We 
can live here forty-eight hours in one day, and in a night get a Rip Van 
Winkle sleep, waking up without finding our gun rusty or our dog dead. 

LONG LIVES OF EASTHAMPTON MINISTERS. 

*'No wonder that Mr. James, the first minister of this place, lived to eighty 
years of age, and Mr. Hunting, his successor, lived to be eighty-one years 
of age, and Dr. Buel, his successor, lived to be eighty-two years of age. In- 
deed, it seems impossible for a minister regularly settled in this place to get 
out of the world before his eightieth year. It has only been in cases of 'stated 



160 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



supply/ or removal from the place, that early demise has been possible. 
And in each of these cases of decease at fourscore it was some unnecessary 
imprudence on their part, or who knows but that they might be living yet? 
That which is good for settled pastors being good for other people, you may 
judge the climate here is salutary and delectable for all. 

''The place was settled in 1648, and that is so long ago that it will probably 
never be unsettled. The Puritans took possession of it first, and have always 
held it for the Sabbath, for the Bible and for God. Much-maligned Puritans! 
The world will stop deriding them after a while, and the caricaturists of their 
stalwart religion will want to claim them as ancestors, but it will be too late 
then; for since these latter-day folks lie about the Puritans now, we will 
not believe them when they want to get into the illustrious genealogical line. 

MORALS OF EASTHAMPTON. 

''Easthampton has always been a place of good morals. One of the ear- 
Hest Puritan regulations of this place was that licensed liquor-sellers should 
not sell to the young, and that half a pint only should be given to four men — 
an amount so small that most drinkers would consider it only a tantaliza- 
tion. A woman here, in those days, was sentenced 'to pay a fine of fif- 
teen dollars, or to stand one hour with a cleft stick upon her tongue, for 
saying that her husband had brought her to a place where there was neither 
gospel nor magistracy.' She deserved punishment of some kind, but they 
ought to have let her off with a fine, for no woman's tongue ought to be 
interfered with. When in olden time a Yankee peddler with the measles 
went to church here on a Sabbath for the purpose of selling his knick-knacks, 
his behavior was considered so perfidious that before the peddler left town 
the next morning the young men gave him a free ride upon what seems 
to us an uncomfortable and insufficient vehicle, namely, a rail, and then 
dropped him into the duck-pond. But such conduct was not sanctioned by 
the better people of the place. Nothing could be more unwholesome for 
a man with the measles than a plunge in a duck-pond, and so the peddler 
recovered one thousand dollars damage. So you see that every form of 
misdemeanor was sternly put down. Think of the high state of morals and 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



161 



religion which induced this people, at an early day, at a political town-meet- 
ing, to adopt this decree: 'We do sociate and conjoin ourselves and suc- 
cessors to be one town or corporation, and do for ourselves and our suc- 
cessors, and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into 
combination and confederation together to maintain and preserve the purity 
of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ which we now possess/ 

*'The pledge of that day has been fully kept; and for sobriety, industry, 
abhorrence of evil and adherence to an unmixed Gospel, we know not the 
equal of this place. 

"That document of two centuries ago reads strangely behind the times, 
but it will be some hundreds of years yet before other communities come 
up to the point where that document stops. All our laws and institutions 
are yet to be Christianized. The Puritans took possession of this land in 
the name of Christ, and it belongs to Him; and if the people do not like that 
religion, let them go somewhere else. They can find many lands where 
there is no Christian religion to bother them. Let them emigrate to Green- 
land, and we will provide them with mittens, or to the South Sea Islands, 
and we will send them ice-coolers. This land is for Christ. Our Legisla- 
tures and congresses shall yet pass laws as radically evangelical as the ven- 
erable document above referred to. Easthampton, instead of being two hun- 
dred years behind, is two hundred years ahead. 

ATTITUDE TOWARD DABWIN". 

"Glorious place to summer! Darwin and Stuart, Mill and Huxley and 
Renan have not been through here yet. May they miss the train the day 
they start for this place! With an Atlantic ocean in which to wash and a 
great-hearted, practical, sympathetic gospel to take care of all the future, 
who could not be happy in Easthampton? 

"The strong sea-breezes ruffle the sheet upon which we write, and the 
'white caps' are tossing up as if in greeting to Him who walks the pave- 
ments of emerald and opal: 

" 'Waft, waft, ye winds, his story, 
And you, ye waters, roll, 
Till, like a sea of glory. 

It spreads from pole to pole.' " 



162 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



The tone of his reference to Darwin and Huxley reveals clearly enough 
that Talmage was untouched by the purely intellectual movement of our 
time. Greater thinkers than Talmage among the clergy, Drummond, for 
instance, in his ''Ascent of Man/' believe that the results of science can no 
longer be denied by the church, and find it wiser to accept them and recon- 
cile the Spirit of Christianity with them. But Talmage, as we have shown, 
was great, not by intellect, but by heart, by power oyer language and over 
the emotions. The sea filled him with its sublimity there at Easthampton, 
and from his pleasant home life there he drew the power which Brooklyn 
people felt pouring from his pulpit. 

Easthampton was the place where Talmage "could sit with his coat ofif," 
a secluded place where he was not "wakened in the morning by the rattle 
of the milkman's wagon," where the "dew woke in the hammock of the 
tree-branches," the place where the "day-dawn made his pen tremble," and 
he had his "untamed woods," and felt so charitably at peace that he would 
have walked with his worst enemy arm-in-arm through his watermelon patch 
and peach orchard. 

TALMAGE'S COW. 

It was at this period of his life that Talmage bought the cow which he 
and his friends have made famous. The cow was doubtless ignorant that 
through Talmage she attained a place in literature, but here she is: "We 
were spending our summers in the country," writes the doctor, speaking of 
a country auction, "and we must have a cow. There were ten or fifteen 
sukies to be sold. There were reds, and piebalds, and duns, and browns, 
and brindles, short horns, long horns, crumpled horns, and no horns. But 
we marked for our own a cow that was said to be full-blooded, whether 
Alderney, or Durham, or Galloway, or Ayrshire, I will not tell lest some 
cattle-fancier feel insulted by what I say; and if there is any grace that I 
pride myself on, it is prudence and a determination always to say smooth 
things. 'How much is bid for this magnificent, full-blooded cow?' cried the 
auctioneer. 'Seventy-five dollars,' shouted some one. I made it eighty. 
He made it ninety. Somebody else quickly made it a hundred. After the 




MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



163 



bids had risen to one hundred and twenty-five dollars, I got animated, and 
resolved that I would have that cow if it took my last cent. 'One hundred 
and forty dollars,' shouted my opponent. The auctioneer said it was the 
finest cow he had ever sold; and, not knowing much about vendues, of course 
I believed him. It was a good deal of money for a minister to pay, but then 
I could get the whole matter off my hands by giving 'a note.' In utter de- 
fiance of everything, I cried out, 'One hundred and fifty dollars!' 'Going 
at that,' said the auctioneer. 'Going at that! once! twice! three times! gone! 
Mr. Talmage has it.' It was one of the proudest moments of our life. There 
she stood, tall, immense in the girth, horns branching, graceful as a tree- 
branch, full-uddered, silk-coated, pensive-eyed. 

"We hired two boys to drive her home while we rode in a carriage. No 
sooner had we started than the cow showed what turned out to be one 
of her pecuHarities — great speed of hoof. She left the boys, outran my 
horse, jumped the fence, frightened nearly to death a group of school-chil- 
dren, and by the time we got home we all felt as if we had all day been on a 
fox-chase. 

We never had any peace with that cow. She knew more tricks than a 
juggler. She could let down any bars, open any gate, outrun any dog and 
ruin the patience of any minister. We had her a year, and yet she never got 
over wanting to go to the vendue. Once started out of the yard, she was 
bound to see the sheriff. We coaxed her with carrots, and apples, and cab- 
bage, and sweetest stalks, and the richest beverage of slops, but without 
avail. 

"x\s a milker she was a failure. 'Mike,' who lived just back of our place, 
would come in at nights from his 'Kerr\' cow,' a scraggly runt that lived on 
the commons, with his pail so full he had to carry it cautiously lest it spill 
over. But after our full-blooded had been in clover to her eyes all day, Brid- 
get would go out to the barn-yard, ancl tug and pull for a supply big enough 
to make two or three custards. I said, 'Bridget, you don't know how to 
milk. Let me try.' I sat down by the cow, tried the full force of dynamics, 
but just at the moment when my success was about to be demonstrated, a 
sudden thought took her somewhere between the horns, and she started for 



164 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



the vendue, with one stroke of her back hoof upsetting the small treasure 
I had accumulated, and leaving me a mere wreck of what I once was. 

''She had, among other bad things, a morbid appetite. Notwithstanding 
we gave her the richest herbaceous diet, she ate everything she could put 
her mouth on. She was fond of horse-blankets and articles of human cloth- 
ing. I found her one day at the clothes-line, nearly choked to death, for 
she had swallowed one leg of something and seemed dissatisfied that she 
could not get down the other. The most perfect nuisance that I ever had 
about my place was that full-blooded cow. 

"Having read in our agricultural journal of cows that were slaughtered 
yielding fourteen hundred pounds neat weight, we concluded to sell her to 
the butcher. We set a high price upon her and got it — that is, we took a 
note for it, which is the same thing. My bargain with the butcher was the 
only successful chapter in my bovine experiences. The only taking-ofif in 
the whole transaction was that the butcher ran away, leaving me nothing 
but a specimen of poor chirography, and I already had enough of that among 
my manuscripts." 

THE HOME CIBCLK 

One of the doctor's evenings at Easthampton gives not only an intimate 
picture of his Long Island tea-table, but harks back to Belleville, the place 
of his first pastorate. On account of the story of his neighbor with the 
ice-cream freezer and his dog Carlo, we have given it a place under the 
head of Talmagean humor, but the reader of it in that place will there 
behold a picture, which Talmage did not know he was giving of his home 
life at Belleville and Easthampton. 

In his Letters to Young People Talmage has a letter on the Home 
Circle for which he drew material from the old home of his parents in 
Bound Brook, no less than from the new home which he built with Mrs. 
Talmage in Brooklyn and Easthampton. "Home, to be a home" he says, 
"is essentially patriarchal; not in the sense in which this term is used among 
tribal nations, but in the necessary reverence for, submission to, and sym- 
pathy with the head of the family." As we pointed out in the chapter on 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE, 



165 



the Birth and Family of Talmage, that was the distinctive spirit of that 
household in which he grew up. On this head of the family, says Talmage, 
"rests almost solely the responsibihty of provision, and to him belongs the 
right of direction. It is difficult for those who have not yet achieved this 
headship to realize the sense of responsibility which often oppresses the 
head of the family. Provision may be so easy to some of us that few clouds 
cross the sunshine of our lives, and we may smile at, or joke away, the little 
domestic troubles which greet us sometimes when we cross the home 
threshold. Few of us are so blessed. It is the far more common lot that 
the business events of the day have been more or less checkered, and the 
head quits the office or warehouse with the brain more or less perturbed, 
the heart oppressed, and both needing and longing for the sunshine and 
the joy of the home and the family circle. To be transferred at such a time 
from the troubles and heavy cares of business to the petty but often irritating 
squabbles of domestic life, is a case to make angels weep, and almost enough 
to drive humanity mad. 

"Let, therefore, but the cares and responsibilities of the head of the 
family be duly realized, and each member of the household must feel toward 
him the necessary sympathy, to guard him from all needless obtrusion of 
little domestic difficulties. It may be — it unhappily is the case — that there 
are heads of families who are unworthy of reverence; or who are so tyrannical 
or oppressive in their rule, that submission is difficult; or who are so unsym- 
pathetic that it is not easy to feel sympathy with them. These are family 
misfortunes which require a consideration beyond our limits. It is enough 
for our purpose here, that if there be not reverence for, submission to, and 
sympathy with the head of the family, there cannot be domestic harmony." 

We commented on the fact that Talmage was untouched by the scientific 
movement of his time, and yet the language which here follows shows him 
falling into the very dialect of Darwin: 

"The infinitely sHght modifications of form," says he, "which make up 
the distinctive external features of mankind are but types of the numberless 
variations of temperament and character. It is not possible that the family 
can be constituted without the intrusion of these varieties. Often they 



166 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



are marked, and sometimes so strong and antagonistic as to become a fertile 
source of domestic disquietude. Often home-loves are enough to smooth 
down the transient asperities arising from this cause; and some of the most 
charming instances of the overpowering influence of home-love occur, where 
differences of temperament and character would otherwise more or less 
seriously disturb the household. The well-known axiom in civil life, 'that 
personal right ends where it encroaches on the right of others,' applies 
with equal or greater force to the closer relations of the household. 

CURES FOR JEALOUSY. 

''The enforcement of selfish claims is often submitted to by the more 
generous members of the household, for the sake of external peace; whilst 
the more generous heart bleeds under the enforced wrong. Jealousy of petty 
privilege is incompatible with domestic peace. The green-eyed monster 
glares upon all favors in which it does not share. Whatever the apparent 
sunshine, there can be no real harmony in a household where jealousy 
influences one or more of its members. 

"For instance, a gentleman once offered a fortnight at the seaside to two 
of four children forming the family of a widowed friend; but the mother 
felt compelled to decline this generous offer because she was afraid that if 
made to two only, the jealousy of the others would be painfully excited. 
The instance is one that gravely illustrates the losses often entailed on 
families by this unhappy feeling. 

"Jealousy, although a transient feeling, is a fertile soil for the growth of 
envy, which, once possessed, grasps us with more persistency, gives a deep 
gloom to the domestic life of the possessor, and often overshadows the whole 
household. 

"Hatred and malice happily rarely intrude their destructive power upon 
domestic life; but the instinctive propensities which generate them must 
needs exist; and it is a powerful antidote to their development that the ordi- 
nary courtesies of our homes should be constantly and carefully regarded. 
If in the external world a due regard for social courtesies is essential to its 
enjoyable constitution, it is greatly more necessary that the varied members 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



167i 



of a household should practice with scrupulous care the softening amenities 
of family life. 

"How often have the jealousies and envyings of individual members been 
calmed down or banished by the sunshiny greeting of its more joyous mem- 
bers! It is said there is a skeleton in every house. This may be; but a 
skeleton may be locked up in a strong room and kept out of sight. 

"With more truth, let us hope, there is an angel in every house. Reader, 
have you not one in yours? If you have not, then the chances of domestic 
disunion have indeed fallen hard upon you. If you have, assiduously culti- 
vate it. You have no conception of how the careful observation and tend- 
ing of this divine element will rub off your own angularities, and tend to 
invest you with its own simplicity and beauty. 

''Avoid, however, all undue familiarity. As much freedom as is essen- 
tial to graceful intercourse must enter into our domestic life; but this free- 
dom must at all times be qualified by a subtile delicacy. The most joyous 
and generous are the most likely to be culpable on this point, and may by a 
httle spontaneous carelessness 'tread on the toes' of their more reserved 
domestic companions. 

"Xor may we forget that when we have inadvertently passed the boun- 
dary of domestic propriety, the truest poHteness dictates a ready and graceful 
apology. The pride which forbids this is the product of selfishness, and is 
itself often a disturbing element of domestic harmony. Mutual confidence, 
oneness, and openness are among the constituents of a harmonious house- 
hold. 

TRANSPAREN-CY OF HOME LIPE. 

" 'Cross purposes' are well known as a disturbing element; but do not 
cross purposes came from the concealment and consequent misapprehension 
of purposes? Dift'erence of purposes must needs arise, and the French pro- 
vide for this by giving largely to each mature member of the household lib- 
erty to live out the individual purpose without regard to the others. This, 
however, is wholly uncongenial to the English idea of the home, where 
the diverse purposes of the members must, somehow or other, be made to 



168 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE. 



dovetail, or be arranged for their separate working out without interfering 
with the harmony of the whole. This is scarcely possible where there is 
concealment and consequent misapprehension. 

"Let the life of every member of a family be transparent in all matters 
that afifect the others; let the wishes and purposes of each be freely talked 
over; and then a Httle arrangement by the head or others, and the con- 
cession and concihation which mutual regard will always generate, will suf- 
fice to bring all the purposes of the domestic group into harmonious working. 

''If the selfish pressure of a purpose of subordinate character produce a 
little antagonism, the judicial interference of the head must be accepted, and 
obedience should be granted without audible or felt disappointment. The 
mutual sympathy of a household should make the purpose of all a source 
of happiness to each. Much of the provider's troubles would often be les- 
sened by a Httle free chat at home about difficulties and purposes. 

"A mother's smaller vexations would often vanish under the sunshine of 
loving discussions with the offending or other members of the family. A 
brother's or a sister's love affair, which generally has absorbing interest for 
the individual concerned, is far too often a subject of painful concealment 
or of rude banter. The propriety of such a love should of course at the 
first be referred to parental judgments. This point settled, it should be 
known to every member of the family, be treated with delicacy and sympa- 
thetic gravity, or become a subject of pleasant conversation whenever the 
chief agent so wishes or may need loving guidance in reference to it." 

Such was the home life of this popular preacher, who spent so many 
of the best years of his life away from home, prosecuting what he was firmly 
convinced was the mission of the Savior. As much as he is shown here to 
have loved his home he sacrificed its society and comforts for the larger 
work of the world, which he came to regard as his broader and more signifi- 
cant home with all its inhabitants as his own brothers and sisters. But in 
all his goings up and down the highways of life his heart invariably turned to 
the quiet fireside where his loved ones dwelt and he makes frequent refer- 
ence to this tendency to wish himself under his own rooftree. Some of the 
most eloquent sermons he ever preached are on the subject of home life, 



MARRIAGES AND HOME LIFE, 



169 



and in our chapter on The Humor and Pathos of Talmage will be found some 
of the pleasant pictures he painted of the lighter pleasures of his domestic 
circle. But deeper than all in his heart was his belief that Heaven was to 
be for all those who lived rightly and loved truly an eternal home where 
those sweet joys that are the blessed heritage of happy domesticity here will 
be multiplied and glorified. 



CHAPTER X. 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 

DOMESTIC LIFE OVERARCHES AND UNDERGIRDS ALL LIFE GRANDEUR OF IN- 
DIVIDUALITY AND THE NECESSITY OF CONTRASTS MARRIAGE THE BENEF- 
ICENT LEGACY OF EDEN FREE-LOVEISM THE BANE OF MODERN SOCIETY. 

Like all great thinkers, Talmage venerated the Home. In it he saw the 
best possible hope for earthly happiness. The home he declared to be "a 
church within a church, a republic within a republic, a world within a world." 
He believed if things went right there they went right everywhere; if they 
went wrong there it was safe to assume the failure of everything else in the 
outside world in any way connected with it. The door-sill of the dwelling- 
house he declares to be the foundation of Church and State. 

But it was the influence of his home on the individual that interested him 
most. Talmage had a sweeping vision and drew his lessons from the socie- 
ties of the world as well as from the lesser things of Hfe, men, women, 
animals, the arts and sciences, trade and traflic, habits, customs, manners, 
great ambitions and petty spites. But always he returned to man. To him 
the world was made for the purpose of Man. He was God's greatest handi- 
work. In him he found food for continual reflection and constant utter- 
ance. And so when he came to measure the influence of home he measured 
it by the good or ill it might do to the individual. He declared that a man 
never gets higher than his own garret nor lower than his own cellar. 'Tn 
other words," he says "domestic life overarches and undergirds all other life. 
The highest house of Congress is the domestic circle; the rocking-chair in 
the nursery is higher than the throne. George Washington commanded 
the forces of the United States, but May Washington commanded George. 
Crysostom's mother made his pen for him. If a man should start out to 

170 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 



171 



run seventy years in a straight line, he could not get out from under the 
shadow of his own mantle piece." 

Talmage studied men and women while other preachers studied books. 
If he went into the hom.e of a craftsman he talked to the people of bricks 
and mortar, or of lumber and laths and nails, or of paints and oils, or of 
chairs and tables, or of pottery or glass, of whatever craft the men of the 
family followed for a livelihood. He learned all he could of the minutes of 
the work that brought bread to the table of that particular home. And of 
the knowledge thus obtained he built his sermons. It was this spirit of 
investigation that gave him the power to interest congregations made up 
of people from all walks of life. He knew the thoughts and aspirations of 
rich and poor alike. He sympathized with them all, too, entered into their 
very lives, saw things from their standpoint and was thus able at all times 
to speak to them direct through the symbolism of their own imaginations. 

It is this that makes his estimate of the home so valuable. "I talk to 
you about a matter of infinite and eternal moment," he says, 'Svhen I speak 
of your home. As individuals we are fragments. God makes the race in 
parts and then He gradually puts them together. What I lack, you make 
up; what you lack, I make up; our deficits and surpluses of character being 
the cog-wheels in the great social mechanism. One person has the patience, 
another has the courage, another has the placidity, another has the enthusi- 
asm; that which is lacking in one is made up by another, or made up by all. 
Buffaloes in herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks, the human race in 
circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It is in this way that He 
balances society; this conservative and that radical keeping things even. 
Every ship must have its mast, cut-water, taffrail, ballast. Thank God, 
then, for Princeton and Andover, for the opposites. I have no more right 
to blame a man for being dift'erent from me than a driving-wheel has a right 
to blame the iron shaft that holds it to the center. John Wesley balances 
Calvin's Institutes. A cold thinker gives to Scotland the strong bones of 
theology. Dr. Guthrie clothes them with a throbbing heart and warm 
flesh. The difficulty is that we are not satisfied with just the work that 
God has given us to do. The water-wheel wants to come inside the mill 



172 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 



and grind the grist, and the hopper wants to go out and dabble in the water. 
Our usefulness and the welfare of society depend upon our staying in just 
the place that God has put us, or intended we should occupy. 

*'For more compactness and that we may be more useful, we are gath- 
ered in still smaller circles in the home group. And there you have the 
same varieties again: brothers, sisters, husbands, and wife; all different in 
temperaments and tastes. It is fortunate that it should be so. If the 
husband be all impulse, the wife must be all prudence. If one sister be 
sanguine in her temperament, the other must be lymphatic. Mary and 
Martha are necessities. The home organization is most beautifully con- 
structed. Eden has gone; the bowers are all broken down; the animals 
that Adam stroked with his hand that morning when they came up to get 
their names have since shot forth tusk and sting, and growled panther at 
panther; and, mid-air, iron beaks plunge till with clotted wing and eyeless 
sockets the twain come whirling down from under the sun in blood and fire. 
Eden has gone, but there is just one little fragment left. It floated down on 
the river Hiddekel out of Paradise. It is the marriage institution. It does 
not, as at the beginning, take away from man a rib. Now it is an addition 
of ribs. 

''This institution of marriage has been defamed in our day. Socialism, 
and polygamy, and Mormonism, and the most damnable of all things, free- 
loveism, have been trying to turn this earth into a Turkish harem or a great 
Salt Lake City. While the pulpits have been comparatively silent, novels — 
their cheapness only equaled by their nastiness — ^are trying to educate, have 
taken upon themselves to educate this nation in regard to holy marriage, 
which makes or breaks for time and eternity. Oh, this is not a mere ques- 
tion of residence or of wardrobe! It is a question charged with gigantic 
joy or sorrow, with heaven or hell. Alas for this new dispensation of 
George Sands! Alas for this mingling of the night-shade with the mar- 
riage garlands! Alas for the venom of adders spit into the tankards! Alas 
for the white frosts of eternal death that kill the orange-blossoms! The 
Gospel of Jesus Christ is to assert what is wrong. Attempt has been made 
to take the marriage institution which was intended for the happiness and 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 



1Y3 



elevation of the race, and make it a mere commercial enterprise; an exchange 
of houses and lands and equipage; a business partnership of two^ stufifed up 
with the stories of romance and knight-errantry, and unfaithfulness and 
feminine angelhood. The two after a while have roused up to find that, 
instead of the paradise they dreamed of, they have got nothing but a Van 
Amburgh's menagerie, filled with tigers and wild cats. Eighty thousand 
divorces in Paris in one year preceded the worst revolution that France ever 
saw. It was only the first course in that banquet of hell; and I tell you 
what you know as well as I do, that wrong notions on the subject of Chris- 
tian marriage are the cause at this day of more moral outrage before God 
and man than any other cause. 

THE FIRST BABY. 

Young friends, who have just entered into the holy state of matrimony, 
the grand symphony of your lifes has commenced, to echo on and on through 
the coming years; the world is all before you, the real business of life has 
begun. What is your stock in trade all told? It is youth, with its opportuni- 
ties, courage, wherewith to press forward, and the true affection you have for 
each other. Perhaps, too, there is that household treasure — a first baby, or 
mayhap a nest-egg of a few hundreds, or a few dollars only, or what is most 
likely, nothing at all. 

All the more need, then, of industry — the corner-stone of success. In- 
dustry is sure of its reward, and it will buy you a home if you so elect. 

"Every good citizen should found a home, for every home becomes an 
argument for patriotism, inasmuch as it establishes a partnership in the gov- 
ernment. Boarding houses are not homes, and a young couple cannot afford 
to help those who run them to riches. It is the fireside of one's own home, 
with its soothing tranquillity, the family table, the companionship of family 
and friends in the evening hours when toil is over, which give enjoyment 
and zest to life, and courage as well, wherewith to battle with the worries 
of the outside world. These are the quiet, simple pleasures which help to 
make the true home, whether the house be of wood or brown stone. 

''Have you happy memories of the dear old homestead? Then give the 



174 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME, 



little ones who will bless your firesides, the same opportunity to reverence 
home by locating it. Secure a permanent home — and avoid those disagree- 
able, destructive May movings. Ownership of a home gives a man a status 
in society — makes him more independent — and if sickness comes, or business 
is dull, there is no drain or dread of rent hanging over him like an incubus— 
happily taxes are comparatively light. 

*'Oh! to be one's own landlord! To be able to drive a nail — or to suit 
one's self in surroundings without the interference of Tom, Dick or Harry 
— must be an intense satisfaction. 

'Tt is imperatively necessary that you both agree to live within your 
means. Even then, you can live comfortable — and have a certain regard for 
appearances — and still have a margin over expenditures. Above all, keep out 
of debt. It is not good economy to buy on credit. You can get a better 
article for cash ; besides, there is a sort of check in the sight even of hard- 
earned money, which hinders the possessor from disposing of it foolishly, 
however seductive the temptation. 

PARSIMONY A VICE. 

"Parsimony is a vice, for it narrows all good impulses ; heaping up riches 
in that way is quite different from saving economically, and investing judi- 
ciously — and unsympathetic must he be who cannot spare a little for sweet 
charity's sake. 

"And you, young wife, who are to be the central figure in the home, will 
also be required to sacrifice — for talk as we will, unpleasant duties which go 
against the grain of our selfish natures are sacrifices." 

Talmage declared that the time has passed for woman to exercise her 
power over man by appealing to his imaginations. She is no longer the 
creature whom troubadours sang of. She is expected to be a helpmate, to 
sit side by side with her husband, to share his success and disappointment, to 
warm his heart by companionship, and thus bind him fast to home. 

Diamonds, sealskin, expensive laces, India shawls, all confer a certain 
prestige in society — but they cannot afford such luxuries who are living in a 
hired house. In order to have things harmonize they must pay a high rent 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 



175 



— and live differently, too, than if they contented themselves with plain 
apparel. The wife of a poorer man cannot afford to imitate richer people. 
The money spent upon bogus jewelry, and a pretentious style of dress, which 
deceives no one, and which is neither ornamental nor genteel, could be better 
invested for an humble roof which would be a shelter in sickness, or for the 
rainy days sure to come. 

The first consideration in buying a home, declares the preacher, is location. 
As health is the sine qua non of home comfort, it is essential that all sanitary • 
conditions be complied v/ith as nearly as possible. Avoid the vicinity of 
stagnant pools, offensive manufactories, and too low ground; above all, see 
that there is a sewer in the street where haply you intend to spend the best 
years of your life. 

In the furnishing of the homestead, often recur to the searching question : 
''Can we afford it?" Do not make the common mistake of decorating the 
^ arlor handsomely, and leaving the kitchen bare of necessaries. Let there be 
harmony throughout. 

" Nor need we power or splendor 
Wide hall or lordly dome; 
The good, the true, the tender, 
These form the wealth of home." 

HOW TO MAKE HOME PLEASANT. 

In an essay on how to make home pleasant, Talmage says : 

"Inasmuch as no one life is fully rounded or completed when lived for 
one's self alone, and that it is not what we shall eat or drink, or wherewithal 
shall we be clothed, that gives life its zest, it has been wisely ordained that 
mankind should be 'set in families,' the better to fulfill the hopes and aspira- 
tions of the soul; and so father, mother, child and home have become our 
most cherished household words. 

"There is nothing selfish or limited in the true mother love. It is as free 
as air, as boundless as the ocean, and fully as deep. Who can fathom it? 

"Gazhig with eager, longing eyes down the vista of time, and feeling the 
tremendous importance of the present in shaping the future — perhaps some 



176 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 



young mother asks herself: 'How can I best serve my husband and child? 
How can I make home pleasant?' 

'Truly, much of the comfort of the household depends upon the training 
of the little ones, but they should have a place in it as responsible beings ; it is 
unwise to cry 'hush' or 'hold your tongue' too often, and thus check their 
innocent impulses and inquiries, besides running the risk of making little 
prigs of those whose desire for knowledge is insatiable. 

"Young folks are domestic tyrants, however, when they are allowed their 
own 'sweet will' at all times; they are positive nuisances when, with sticky 
fingers and unkempt hair, they inflict unwelcome caresses upon visitors — 
and when saucy, they deserve judicious punishment. 

"Not that the youngsters' ears are to be made safety valves for passionate 
mothers! — ^punishment should be reformatory. 

"The earnest mother can, by the exercise of a little tact, put herself en 
rapport with her child, and thus gain its confidence and love, and at the same 
time control it, and what a delightful atmosphere has that home when the 
child is quick to obey ! 

"And if, on the contrary, the household is made uncomfortable by children 
who don't 'mind,' it is almost invariably the parents' fault; there are but very 
few exceptions to this rule. 

THE BEACOMT LIGHT OF HOME. 

"A consistent example is the beacon light of home! Precepts are useless 
without it. Oh ! that this indisputable fact were indelibly graven upon every 
parent's heart throughout the length and breadth of our land! 

"The opinions, the conversation, the manners even, of the parent, influence 
the child, and he is a keen-sighted, merciless critic too ! 

"Think of it, young father and mother! Perhaps years after you are 
dead your child will remember your example, and follow it, whether it be 
good or evil. 

"Young folks must be amused, it is a necessity to them, and if amusement 
is not provided for them, they will seek it for themselves; and most likely 
away from home. Beginning with the rattle, the little irrepressible craves 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 



fun and frolic; boys and girls delight in noise. Let the youngsters, then, be 
allowed to romp occasionally, and to have their games of instruction and 
amusement, of which there is an endless variety. 

piano is an economic investment, for music in the house makes home 
pleasant; it instructs and softens, it keeps young people within doors, for it 
brings cheerful company, and is provocative of mirth and hilarity; what is 
there more delightful than the blending of fresh young voices within the 
charmed precinct of home? 

"A love for the beautiful and the ornamental should be included in the 
education of young people, not indeed to supersede the useful, but as tending 
to refinement of ideas and manners, and also to elevate the character of home 
pleasures. It is a grave mistake to suppose that refinement is a luxury — 
belonging exclusively to the wealthy. Talent brought out in any direction, 
fancy work, books, flowers, but more especially reading aloud, all are simple, 
inexpensive methods of making home cheerful and pleasant, as well as of 
keeping mind and body out of mischief. 

''It must not be forgotten, too, that proper ventilation is often the preven- 
tive of cross humors, and that without cleanliness a home cannot be even 
tolerably pleasant. 

DAWDLING ABOUT THE HOUSE. 

"Young people should be taught that instead of dawdling about the house 
they should have a life purpose ; they should be told that however inconvenient 
and depressing poverty may be it is not a crime, and that 'the notion of great 
inferiority and ungentlemanliness as necessarily belonging to the character 
of a mechanic' is simply ridiculous; that he is a king compared to a lazy, 
useless man, and that labor is sacred. 

" A servant with this clause 
Makes drudgery divine! 
Who sweeps a room as for thy laws, 
Makes that and the action fine." 

" 'Blessed is he that considereth the poor.' Not only witlh timely gifts, 



178 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 



but with thoughtful kindness, and outspoken sympathy as well — sometimes 
of more than money value. 

"Benevolence of the considering kind should be one, and not the least 
either, of the household mottoes. What sort of a home must that be where 
its members take all, but never give? Boys as well as girls should be taught 
by example the courtesies and amenities of life — those seeming trifles, gener- 
ally reserved for the outside world, but which go far toward making home 
pleasant. 

"Really, there is something expected of you — sons and daughters. You 
are surrounded by an atmosphere of love and care, and are apt to become 
selfish and ungrateful, accepting your blessings as a matter of course, and 
forgetting to contribute your share to the family comfort. Will you please 
remember that selfishness is only another name for utter destitution of spirit? 
Kind words! How sweetly they fall upon mother's ear in her despondency! 
W^hat angels of light and mercy ! Truly, they are Heaven's messengers ! 

"Next to the sunlight of Heaven is the sunlight of a cheerful face. Mother 
will be sure to feel its electrifying influence, and father will gain in fait^^ and 
courage. Look cheerily, then. Answer softly, for 'a soft answer turneth 
away wrath;' and never forget that a sweet, even temper is to the household 
what sunshine is to the trees and flowers. 

COURTSHIP AFTER MARRIAGE. 

"It is a fatal error for a woman to presume upon her privileges as a wife 
to become a slattern at home. It is to be hoped that courtship after marriage 
is not one of the lost arts. True; when men have once wooed and won they 
are content to be quiet and undemonstrative; but after all they become more 
keen-sighted, and if their pretty bird does not care to sing as sweetly they 
suspect that they have been caught with chaff. 

"It will make home very pleasant if you, young married people, will but 
continue the thousand harmless stratagems which never failed — once upon 
a time you know — to bring smiles to your lips. 

"In conclusion, it is gentleness that softens rugged natures. There are 
those unsympathetic and crabbed upon whom it would seem almost a profa- 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 



179 



nation to lavish one token of tender feeling, yet we should 'cast our bread 
upon the waters,' and if it does not 'return to us after many days' we shall 
at least benefit ourselves, for it is a maxim, oft repeated, but always true, 
that 'in order to be happy we should endeavor to make others happy.' More- 
over, 'though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it 
with us, or we find it not.' 

"Then let us not wait for an opportunity of doing heroic deeds, and thus 
neglect the Httle things, the little kindnesses which make domestic life 
what it is designed to be, and which after all are the very things that make 
home pleasant. 

Oh, there are golden moments in men's lives, 
Sudden, unlooked for, as the little clouds, 
All gold, which suddenly illume the gates 
Of the lost sun. 

Oh, pray for them ! They bring 
No increase like the gain of sun and showers. 
Only a moment's brightness to the earth, 
Only a moment's gleam in common life. 
Yet who would change them for the wealth of worlds? 

APOLOGIZE WHEN WRONG. 

"Never be ashamed to apologize when you have done wrong in domestic 
affairs. Let that be a law of your household. The best thing I ever heard 
of my grandfather, whom I never saw, was this : That once having unright- 
eously rebuked one of his children, he himself having lost his patience, and, 
perhaps, having been misinformed of the child's doings, found out his mis- 
take, and in the evening of the same day gathered all his family together, 
and said: 'Now, I have an explanation to make, and one thing to say. 
Thomas, this morning I rebuked you very unfairly. I am sorry for it. I 
rebuked you in the presence of the whole family, and now I ask your forgive- 
ness in their presence.' It must have taken some courage to do that. It 
was right, was it not? Never be ashamed to apologize for domestic inac- 
curacy. Find out the points; what are the weak points, if I may call them 
so, of your companion, and then stand aloof from them. Do not carry the 



180 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 



fire of your temper too near the gunpowder. If the wife be easily fretted by 
disorder in the household, let the husband be careful where he throws his 
slippers. If the husband comes home from the store with his patience all 
exhausted, do not let the wife unnecessarily cross his temper ; but both stand 
up for your rights, and I will promise the everlasting sound of the war- 
whoop. Your life will be spent in making-up, and marriage will be to you an 
unmitigated curse. Cowper said : 

" The kindest and the happiest pair 
Will find occasion to forbear; 
And something, every day they live, 
To pity, and perhaps forgive." 

SYMPATHY OF OCCTJPATIOW". 

"I advise you also to cultivate sympathy of occupation. Sir James Mcin- 
tosh, one of the most eminent and elegant men that ever lived, while stand- 
ing at the very height of his eminence, said to a great company of scholars, 
'My wife made me.' The wife ought to be the advising partner in every 
firm. She ought to be interested in all the losses and gains of shop and store. 
She ought to have a right — she has a right — to know everything. If a man 
goes into a business transaction that he dare not tell his wife of, you may 
depend that he is on the way either to bankruptcy or moral ruin. There 
m3.y be some things which he does not wish to trouble his wife with, but if 
he dare not tell her, he is on the road to discomfiture. On the other hand, 
the husband ought to be sympathetic with the wife's occupation. It is no 
easy thing to keep house. Many a woman that could have endured martyr- 
dom as well as Margaret, the Scotch girl, has actually been worn out by house 
management. There are a thousand martyrs of the kitchen. It is very annoy- 
ing, after the vexations of the day around the stove or the table, or in the 
nursery or parlor, to have the husband say, 'You know nothing about 
trouble; you ought to be in the store half an hour.' Sympathy of occupa- 
tion! If the husband's work cover him with the soot of the furnace or the 
odors of leather or soap factories, let not the wife be easily disgusted at the 
begrimed hands or unsavory aroma. Your gains are one, your interests are 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME, 



181 



one, your losses are one; lay hold of the work of life with both hands. Four 
hands to fight the battles ; four eyes to watch for the danger ; four shoulders 
on which to carry the trials. It is a very sad thing when the painter has a 
wife who does not like pictures. It is a very sad thing for a pianist when 
she has a husband who does not like music. It is a very sad thing when a 
wife is not suited unless her husband has what is called a 'genteel busi- 
ness.' 

"I have one more word of advice to give to those who would have a 
happy home, and that is, let love preside in it. When your behavior in the 
domestic circle becomes a mere matter of calculation; when the caress you 
give is merely the result of deliberate study of the position you occupy, happi- 
ness lies stark dead on the hearth-stone. When the husband's position as 
head of the household is maintained by loudness of voice, by strength of arm, 
by fire temper, the republic of domestic bliss has become a despotism that 
neither God nor man will abide. Oh, ye who promised to love each other at 
the altar! how dare you commit perjury? Let no shadow of suspicion come 
on your affection. It is easier to kill that flower than it is to make it 
live again. The blast from hell that puts out that light, leaves you in the 
blackness of darkness forever. 

EMPTINESS OF MEORE SHOW. 

**Here are a man and wife; they agree in nothing else, but they agree 
they will have a home. They will have a splendid home, and they think that 
if they have a house they will have a home. Architects make the plan, and 
the mechanics execute it ; the house to cost one hundred thousand dollars. It 
is done. The carpets are spread ; lights are hoisted ; curtains are hung ; cards 
of invitation are sent out. The horses in gold-plated harness prance at the 
gate; guests come in and take their places; the flute sounds; the dancers go 
up and down; and with one grand whirl the wealth and the fashion and the 
mirth of the great town wheel amidst the pictured walls. Ha ! this is happi- 
ness. Float it on the smoking viands; sound it in the music; whirl it in 
the dance ; cast it on the snow of sculpture ; sound it up the brilliant stairway ; 
flash it in chandeliers ! Happiness, indeed ! Let us build on the center of the 



18^ 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME, 



parlor floor a throne to Happiness; let all the guests when come in, bring 
their flowers and pearls and diamonds, and throw them on this pyramid, and 
let it be a throne, and then let Happiness, the queen, mount the throne, and 
we will stand around, and, all chalices lifted, we will say, 'Drink, O queen! 
live forever!' But the guests depart, the flutes are breathless, the last clash 
of the impatient hoofs is heard in the distance, and the twain of the household 
come back to see the Queen of Happiness on the throne amidst the parlor 
floor. But, alas ! as they come back, the flowers have faded, the sweet odors 
have become the smell of a charnel-house, and instead of the Queen of happi- 
ness there sits there the gaunt form of Anguish, with bitten lip and sunken 
eye, and ashes in her hair. The romp of the dancers who have left seems 
rumbling yet, like jarring thunders that quake the floor and rattle the glasses 
' of the feast rim to rim. The spilled wine on the floor turns into blood. The 
wreaths of plush have become wriggling reptiles. Terrors catch tangled 
in the canopy that overhangs the couch. A strong gust of wind comes 
through the hall and the drawing-room and the bed-chamber, in which all 
the lights go out. And from the lips of the wine-beakers come the words, 
'Happiness is not in us!' And the arches respond, Tt is not in us!' And 
the frozen lips of Anguish break open, and, seated on the throne of wilted 
flowers, she strikes her bony (hands together and groans, Tt is not in me!' 

"That very night a clerk with a salary of a thousand dollars a year — only 
one thousand — goes to his home, set up three months ago, just after the 
marriage-day. Love meets him at the door ; love sits with him at the table ; 
love talks over the work of the day ; love takes down the Bible, and reads 
of Him who' came our souls to save; and they kneel, and while they are 
kneeling — right in that plain room, on that plain carpet — the angels of God 
build a throne, not out of flowers that perish and fade away, but out of gar- 
lands of heaven, wreath on top of wreath, amaranth on amaranth, until 
the throne is done. Then the harps of God sounded, and suddenly there 
appeared one who mounted the throne with eye so bright and brow so fair 
that the twain knew it was Christian Love. And they knelt at the foot of 
the throne, and putting one hand on each head, she blessed them, and said, 
'Happiness is with me!' And that throne of celestial bloom withered not 



BLESSED INFLUENCES OF HOME. 



183 



with the passing years; and the queen left on the throne till one day the 
married pair felt stricken in years — felt themselves called away, and knew 
not which way to go, and the queen bounded from the throne, and said, 
Tollow me, and I will show you the way up to the realm of everlasting 
love.' And so they went up to sing songs of love, and walk on pavements 
of love, and to live together in mansions of love, and to' rejoice forever 
in the truth that God is love." 



CHAPTER XI 



THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY. 

COLLOQUIAL AND DRAMATIC DISREGARD OF CONVENTIONALITIES CONTRAST 

WITH RICH men's CHURCHES AND THEIR PREACHERS STORIES ILLUSTRA- 
TIVE OF THE CHARACTER OF THE MAN TRICKS OF MANNER AND SPEECH. 

Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage did not belong to a class. He was a type by him- 
self. His sermons were unique. His own comment on his oratorical style 
was : ''My positive mode of preaching seems to stir the hostilities of all earth 
and hell." Being a fighter, he liked opposition. In telling the story of his 
life he once said : 

'Teeling called upon fifteen years ago to explore underground New York 
city life, that I might report the evils to be combated, I took with me two 
elders of my church and a New York police commissioner and a policeman, 
and I explored and reported the horrors that needed removal and the allure- 
ments that endangered our young men. There came upon me an outburst 
of assumed indignation that frightened almost everybody but myself. That 
exploration put into my church thirty or forty newspaper correspondents, from 
North, South, East and West; which opened for me new avenues in which 
to preach the gospel that otherwise would never have been opened. Years 
passed on and I preached a series of sermons on amusements, and a false 
report of what I did say roused a violence that threatened me with poison 
and dirk and pistol and other forms of extinguishment, until the chief of the 
Brooklyn police, without any suggestion from me, took possession of the 
church with twenty-four policemen to see that no harm was done." 

Talmage gave no silken discourse in which good taste is considered of far 
greater importance than powerful effect or inspiration. He was willing to 
shock people, if he could shock them into better lives. 

In the Brooklyn pulpit where he began preaching in 1869 he resorted to 
the tricks of manner and speech which caused him to be caricatured from one 

184 



THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY. 185 

end of the country to the other. On one occasion, when it was time for him 
to begin his sermon, he went to one edge of the platform, buttoned his coat, 
raised his arms and wheehng suddenly about dashed in running jumps across 
the platform, his arms waving like the sails of a windmill, his coat tails flying 
behind him, and his trousers working up above his shoe tops. 

He had not spoken a word, and some of his congregation were ready to 
shriek, not knowing what to make of it, when Mr. Talmage stopped short, 
turned and walked back to the center of the platform and exclaimed, as the 
beginning of his sermon : "Young man, you're rushing to destruction !" 

Then he preached of the dangers of city life to young men who yielded 
to temptation. 

By such methods he drew thousands of persons to the church, and, as it 
was said, the church treasurer complained that there were thousands of pennies 
in the contribution plates. 

But the thousand pennies, like the widow's mite, were to Talmage far 
more acceptable than the ten-dollar bill. 

He was, and believed in being, an actor on the platform and in the pulpit ; 
not what is usually called dramatic or ''stagy," but an actor in the truest sense, 
feeling his subject in all its relations, and bringing into service eyes, voice, 
hands and the entire form to aid in the appeals and truths he imaged and 
enforced. And he had an abundance of personal magnetism. 

Dr. Talmage is said to have reached a far greater number of people with 
his sermons than any other preacher. The sermons he delivered to his con- 
gregation of 6,000 in the tabernacle at Brooklyn each Sunday appeared Mon- 
day morning in a syndicate of papers in this and other countries, and through 
these channels it is estimated that they reached 50,000,000 readers. He also 
made his influence felt as editor of the Christian Herald and as a constant 
contributor to numerous periodicals and a voluminous writer of books. 

When he syndicated his sermons he prepared them a week or two in 
advance, as he had to do to supply the presses in time. When he went to 
Europe and the Holy Land he sold his sermons before he left New York. 
They were printed as having come by cable. One was printed on a Monday 
morning as having been delivered at Oueenstown, whence Mr. Talmage sailed 



186 THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY. 

on the preceding Saturday, and after Mr. Talmage got back he acknowledged 
that it had never been dehvered at all. 

From the Holy Land came the story that an American had met him there 
and had asked the preacher to baptize him in the Jordan, which Mr.' Talmage 
did. In Brooklyn, however, Mr. Talmage's enemies said that he had caught a 
tramp on the river and ducked him. 

The travesty did not hurt the preacher, he was simply too strong to be 
so hurt. 

We have given the most extreme case of his sensationalism in that striking 
rush of his across the platform — one of the things which led to his trial by 
an ecclesiastical synod for buffoonery in the pulpit. The story of that trial 
is told in another chapter. 

Here it should be said that the bulk of his sermons do not depend for their 
effect upon these or any other tricks of delivery. Unlike the words of many 
great preachers, his words retain effectiveness even when set down in cold 
print. The man of cultivated literary taste finds in them many and many a 
golden passage, many an apt phrase and striking illustration. The homeliness 
of his similes is like that of Latimer and other great preachers in the English 
tongue, and from these simple and lowly figures, he ranges to perfect organ- 
bursts of rh3^thmic prose-poetry, one of these coming at the end of nearly all 
his sermons. In his sermon on the burning of the Brooklyn Tabernacle from 
which we quote at length under another heading, he says : 'The great organ, 
as the flames roared through its pipes, played its own requiem." Talmage 
himself did not preach his own requiem, but in his preaching he was some- 
what like that organ, the fire of the Spirit roaring through his soul as through 
an instrument, the music of it awing and overpowering thousands upon thou- 
sands of hearers. 

He says in his sermon. Bartering for Eternity, that ''Christ never forgot 
the occupation of the people to whom he spoke. His metaphors and illustra- 
tions were apt to be drawn from every-day business of the people whom he 
addressed." The parallel with the metaphors and illustrations of Talmage 
himself is unmistakable. The fact is pointed out by us with perfect rever- 
ence, it was undoubtedly present also in the mind of Talmage, and by him 



THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY, 18Y 

also considered reverently. Talmage was, like every mortal man, full of 
faults, and he regarded Christ as a being without faults. Nevertheless, he is 
able really to understand and sympathize with Jesus of Nazareth only in so far 
as he has in himself the same nature, feeling the same emotions, facing the 
same problems, striving against the same difficulties. Many and many an 
interpretation Talmage makes of passages in the Christ-story could not have 
been made had Talmage not already had in his own life a kindred experience, 
in his own nature a kindred chord. This, of course, is true of every man. No 
one is capable of understanding anything whatever which does not already 
exist, active or latent, in his own nature. 

QITALITTES OF TAIMAGEAN ORATORY. 

The qualities of Dr. Talmage's oratory combine the best of two schools 
— the colloquial and the dramatic. Not that he subjected himself to the 
teaching of those schools. Orators are born. Speakers are made. His 
only aim was to have something to say, and to say it. The manner had to 
manage itself. That manner, without levying on art, consciously, fully com- 
plied with it. The colloquialism of his oratory is in his extemporary ex- 
pression. That was as familiar as the words of men to men, crammed full 
of Saxon, and as direct as a blow from the shoulder. Much that was dra- 
matic also marked his discourse. That is made plain by a perusal of his 
sermons. His descriptions are pre-Raphaelistic. He was in love with 
nature, and instinct with human nature. His appeals were moved on the 
highest plain of revelation to the highest consideration of human duty, 
human interest and human safety. He was intensely sympathetic in nature, 
intensely ardent in conviction, intensely earnest in his conception of man's 
estate and God's goodness, and justice, too, as absolute as his goodness. 
All of which made him intensely dramatic. His manner mated with his 
nature. It was each sermon in action. He conscripted voice, eyes, hands, 
his entire body, into the service of the illustration of the truth. Gestures 
were tihe accompaniment of what he said. As the preacher stood out before 
the immense throng, without scrap of notes or even a table before him, the 
effect produced cannot be understood by those who never saw it. The 



188 THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY. 



solemnity, the tears, the awful hush, as though the audience would not 
breathe again, are ofttimes painful. 

POWER TQ MASTER AIT AUDIENCE. 

Dr. Talmage's voice was peculiar, not musical, but productive of start- 
ling, arousing, subduing effects, such as characterized no preacher on either 
side of the Atlantic. In his power to grapple an audience and master it 
from text to peroration, he had no equal. Yet he was much misrepresented 
and caricatured by those who had not heard him. No unprejudiced man 
hearing him could doubt that he was in red-hot earnest, and that his 
eccentricities were natural. He made no reply tO' what was said against his 
preaching, but went on proclaiming the old-fashioned Gospel of justification 
by faith in Christ, preaching it, however, in his own w^ay, and with entire 
disregard for all conventionalities. Now that he has passed through the 
period of criticism and misrepresentation that await every new-comer and 
every powerful original nature, the world has acknowledged it. 

The sermons averaged forty minutes in delivery. They would have been 
longer if they had not been so good. The usual prayer, another hymn, and 
the benediction concluded the service. The audience rose as those who 
have been under a spell. The thousands filed out to their homes. The 
streets both ways were a panorama of people. Standing at a given point 
and listening you heard them all talking about the sermon. Mr. Talmage 
never delivered a sermon in Brooklyn which God did not bless to the salva- 
tion of souls. 

The average numbei; admitted at each communion was over thirty-five. 
Very like unto the preaching-service was the Friday evening lecture-ser- 
vice. Therein, however, the brethren took part. The two sermons and 
one lecture each week were published in full in The Methodist and The 
Interior, The Advance, The Christian at Work, and numerous syndicates 
in America, and in many secular and religious papers in England and Scot- 
land. That made a congregation of two continents, and after the travels 
of Talmage the congregation w^as widened and strengthened to include 30,- 
000,000 people all over the world. Moreover, the sermons were published 



THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY. 189 



in book form and new editions are being even now prepared. But all his 
books — ''Crumbs Swept Up," "Abominations of Modern Society," 'Trom 
Manger to Throne," "Fishing Too Near Shore," — as well as his sermons, 
are republished in Europe and widely scattered. 

RESULT OF THE PREACHING OF TALMAGE. 

What were the results of the preaching of this remarkable man? One 
result, the restoration of sermons to their place in hebdomanal and book 
literature, has just been indicated. The Tabernacle, with its thousands, was 
another. The Tabernacle building in the revolution it worked in church 
architecture was another. Within a year after the enlargement of the Brook- 
lyn Tabernacle thirty tabernacles, less in size necessarily, but otherwise 
identical, were built or being built in America. 

Every man who hopes to hold the attention of an age so busy as that 
of the present century long enough to make his thought understood must 
acquire the art of expression. Demosthenes is said to have practiced painful 
expedients in order to speak clearly. Talmage seems to have gone to 
equally great lengths to acquire a style and manner of delivery. He was 
as original in his manner as in his thought, and in both he made a radical 
departure from the accepted style of pulpit oratory. He actually shocked his 
thought into the minds of his hearers at times. But he w^ould follow some 
coarse allusion, or strange gymnastic, with such a lofty flight of fancy, such 
a vivid picture of nature, or such a dramatic recital of some personal drama 
that those who had been on the point of leaving the church would sit spell- 
bound under the flood of his eloquence. 

EXAMPLE OP THE TALMAGE STYLE. 

The peculiar rhetorical style of Dr. Talmage can best be understood 
from an example. In one of his sermons in the famous series devoted to 
the gambling hells of New York, of which he had made a study, he electri- 
fied an audience one Sunday morning with this climax of oratory. 

"When they bet on one number they call it a gate! 

"When they bet on two numbers they call it a saddle! 



190 THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY, 



'When they bet on three numbers they call it a horse! 

''And thousands of young men get onto that gate and mount that saddle 
and ride that horse to damnation!" 

It was easy for the old style ministers to criticize that sort of rhetoric in 
the pulpit, but such expression stuck in the memory of listeners, they had a 
decided burr-like quality, and those who heard Talmage once wanted to hear 
him again. 

But Talmage was a poet of high character, as is evidenced in certain pas- 
sages in almost every sermon he ever preached. That he understood and 
appreciated the gift of song is shown in one of his Letters to Young People, 
under the head of Thoughts About Poetry. "One should not mistake the 
flow of a vivid imagination into verse for that union of deep feeling, pro- 
found thought, and power of observation which we style poetry." It would 
be hard to find a better definition for poetry than is here expressed. And 
Talmage had in himself the "union of deep feeling, profound thought, and 
power of observation" to a remarkable degree. He makes no reference to 
the music of poetry in this criticism, and it is probably because he was 
not musical in the same degree that he was picturesque and dramatic. He, 
as every critic does, uttered himself and no more. But there is sympathy 
with nature and music, too, in the following apostrophy to Spring: 

GLORY OF A SPRING MORNING. 

"After the earth has been rendered desolate by the unsparing hand of 
winter, the trees bereft of their green garments, the flowers buried, and the 
land parched up by crackling frosts, or buried beneath rolling floods, the 
gentle Spring comes with blithesome heart and sunny smile — like a loving 
spirit from the beauteous flower land — ^bringing with her the golden sun- 
shine to sanctify and replenish the great throbbing heart of nature. She 
comes with tearful eyes, and sunny feet, and golden tresses dripping from 
the waters of her sheeny home, to fling gold, and green, and beauty, and 
perfume over all the budding and replenished earth; birds leave their sunny 
skies afar to greet her with their gentle songs; the breezes come from the 
warm south, toiling their long jo^urney across the wide, wide sea, to gather 



THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY. 191 



up the odors which she scatters over hill and dale; the flowers wake up 
from their long winter sleep to gaze upon her smiles; and the broad, green 
earth exults for its verdurous beauty, and bounds with a lusty and impas- 
sioned joy. 

"At her fairy touch, the emerald gates of the season fly open, and display 
a wade expanse of living and budding beauty — a landscape glittering like a 
broad ocean basking in yellow sunshine, with swelling uplands gliding away 
into the distance like gently heaving waves; and beyond all He the dark 
green lands of summer, where the primeval forests stretch away in their 
grandeur; and where breezes float over valley and stream laden wath the 
odors of wild thyme, and resonant w^ith the dreamy music of the wild; and 
where the clouds are so dazzled by the blinding glare that they lose their 
way, and stand gazing in bewilderment upon the broad, green earth which 
lies below. 

OVERTHROW OF WINTER'S EMPIRE. 

"Old Winter knows that now his empire must fall. He sends forth a bleak 
north wind among the ghastly skeletons of last summer and over the new 
buds of spring; severs them with his keen shears, and hurls them prostrate 
on the waters of the marsh, as trophies of his master's potency. Still seek- 
ing to regain his despotism, but too weak to fling his icy chains again upon 
the earth, he crushes a few^ early flowers between his trembling fingers, and 
scatters them in ruins upon the budding ground; he breathes out a blight 
upon the forest, but the trees heed not his desolating spell, and only grow 
more vigorous and green wdth the new life with which they have been en- 
dowed. He gathers himself up with one last desperate effort; but the warm 
air oppresses him — the sweet odors annoy him, the light blinds and confuses 
him, he raves wildly, and clutches at the air; and with the last pulses of his 
heart, the hoary tyrant totters in his footsteps, his long, withered fingers let 
fall his icy scepter, he sinks down upon the soft mossy carpet of the rejoic- 
ing earth; and, behold! his reign is at an end. The great heart of Nature 
beats high wifh regenerated hope, she pours forth her exultations over for- 
est and field, over mountain and stream, moorland and lea, green covert and 



192 THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY, 



mossy dell. The air vibrates with the swelling choirs of unnumbered birds, 
and the great world goes dashing on more exulting than before, singing 
a new song of glory as it plows its way through the abysses of cold space. 

'The sights and sounds of spring have a tenfold vigor and freshness. It 
is the season of new life, new hope, and new^ beauty. The leafing of the 
trees, the unfolding of the flowers, which follow each other in quick succes- 
sion, till the earth is mantled all over with lovely forms and glittering hues; 
the voices of the sweet birds singing their songs of love, all repay us for past 
frost and sleets, and lead us into the ardent embraces of the refulgent 
summer. 

"Among the first spring flowers we find the daisy that 'never dies,' the 
dwarf furze, and the little chickweed, although these may better be regarded 
as the few connecting links between autumn and spring; for winter never 
kills them quite, and wthen the frosts break up they put forth a new show of 
blossoms, as though proud of their sufferings in struggling to keep the world 
from being quite without flowers." 

LIGHTNING AFTER SUNSHINE. 

It hardly seems possible that the man who wrote so tenderly of gentle 
Spring could have given utterance to the following: 

"Nothing ever succeeds in this country without being well cursed. If a 
man, or book, or periodical, go forth unassaulted, ruin is nigh. There is 
nothing that so decidedly lifts a thing up before the public gaze as the end 
of a bayonet." 

The latter is Talmagean. It is strong, virile, dogmatic, terse, figurative, 
and more than all — true. Compared to the pretty essay on the beauties 
of spring it is as a passionate man to a beautiful statue of marble. It makes 
us thankful that Talmage, as he tells us, early in his preaching resolved to 
speak extempore, and stuck to it. He once described for the Brooklyn 
Eagle his methods of making sermons. "I make most of my sermons walk- 
ing the floor," he writes. "I can always think better on my feet. I very 
often dictate sermons to a stenographer, and after he has written out his 
notes I read it over and by that time I have placed the substance of it perma- 



THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY. 193 



nently in my memory. I can think better standing before an audience than 
I can in the privacy of my own home; but it would be a very unsafe thing 
depending on the inspiration of the moment. A minister will not do so 
unless he is thoroughly lazy. My own rule is not to go into the pulpit or 
upon the platform without enough ideas to occupy the time usefully, whether 
I use those ideas or not. No minister has a right to go before a congrega- 
tion unprepared, especially in these days, when through newspapers and 
many other forms of distribution of knowledge the audience may happen to 
know as much as he does. My idea is that if a man sits in his study and 
carefully writes out a theological essay it may do well for a review or a 
magazine, but it will not interest a congregation, but no man can lay down 
a rule for others. Many are ruined for life, so far as wo^rk is concerned, by 
trying to do as others do. Extemporaneousness of speech is best for some 
and a thorough use of manuscript is decidedly best for others. 

MtNTSTERS TEMPTED TO INDOLENCE. 

*'Th$ temptation which almost every minister has felt who has acquired 
any facility in pubhc utterance is to indolence. The extemporaneous faculty 
has been so much talked about and extolled that a great many ministers 
have sacrificed all their effectiveness in trying to do things impromptu. 
Unless a man uses his pen a good deal in the act of composition he will soon 
lack terseness and compactness of expression. I find that my best days for 
work are Wednesdays and Thursdays — equal distances from the Sabbath — ■ 
and the morning of each day I am generally not observable, but it is difficult 
to make an iron rule in these cities as to when you will be seen and when 
yoiu will not be seen. 

"I think Brooklyn is a first-rate place for ministers. The people generally 
allow a pastor in these regions to work in his own way and the congrega- 
tions are lenient and not unreasonable in their demands. 

EIRST ATTEMPT TO PREACH WITHOUT NOTES. 

"I began my ministry by writing out my sermons with great care, taking 
every manuscript into the pulpit and confining myself strictly to it. But 



194 THE QUALITIES OP TALMAGEAN ORATORY, 



coming out of a theological seminary with but little preparation in the way 
of material, I found the preparation of two sermons and a lecture a week 
a complete physical exhaustion, so I retracted from that habit and used no 
notes at all. My first experience in this new departure was marked and 
unusual. It was in my village church at Belleville, N. J. Finding that I 
must stop the exhaustive work of preparation I resolved on a certain Sun- 
day night to extemporize. The church had ordinarily been lighted with 
lamps, as there was no gas in the village, but the trustees had built a gas 
house in the rear of the church and the new mode of lighting the edifice 
was to be tested on the very night I had decided to begin my extemporan- 
eous speaking. The church was thronged with people who had come to 
see the new mode of lighting. I had about ten. minutes of my sermon in 
manuscript and put it down on the Bible, intending when the manuscript 
gave out to launch out on the great sea of extemporaneousness. Although 
it was a cool night, it was a very hot one for me, and the thermometer 
seemed to be about up to 120 degrees. At a very slow rate I went on with 
my sermon, making my manuscript last as long as possible. Coming within 
three or four sentences of the end of what I had written and in great trepida- 
tion as to what would happen when I began to extemporize, suddenly the 
gas lights lowered to half their intended size. I said within myself, 'Oh, if 
the gas would only go out!' and sure enough as I uttered the last word of 
my manuscript the lights were suddenly extinguished. I ^aid, 'Brethren, 
it is impossible for us to proceed. Receive the benediction!' I went home 
greatly relieved, feeling that I had been rescued from a great crisis, but 
fully resolved that I would break the bondage of manuscript and be a free 
man in the pulpit, and my habit has been to extemporize ever since. God 
has made three books for pulpit texts — the book of Revelation, the book 
of Nature and the book of Providence. All these books are inspired. Christ 
took most His texts from the book of Nature. 'Consider the lilies,' 'Behold 
the fowls of the air,' 'Salt is good,' 'As a hen gathereth her chickens under 
her wings.' I have only one idea in the sermon, and that is helpfulness. 
Every man needs help, unless he be a fool. In some parts of his nature or in 
some circumstances of his life he needs reinforcement. If men find a prac- 



THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY 



195 



tical helpfulness in the sermon, prayers and singing of a church they will 
go there." 

AS AN AUTHOR IIT PRIVATE LIFE. 

As an author Dr. Talmage was no less popular than as preacher and 
lecturer. Beginning in 1872, a volume of his sermons has been published 
almost yearly, and he has written many other books. His sermons, originally 
published in the newspapers, have been extensively pirated and books com- 
piled from them. Speaking of this, in 1893 Talmage estimated that there 
had been fifty-five volumes of his writing put forth, of which he had author- 
ized fifteen. Some of the titles were 'The Marriage Ring," ''Pathway of 
Life," "The Abominations of Modern Society," "Around the Tea Table," 
"Crumbs Swept Up," "Live Coals," "Talmage on Rum," "From Pyramids 
to Acropolis" and "From Manger to Throne." These last two were books 
of travel extensively sold by subscription. "From Manger to Throne" was 
a life of Christ interwoven with Dr. Talmage's account of his journey through 
the scenes of that life. 

Dr. Talmage, notwithstanding his busy pastorate, lectured extensively 
both in this country and Great Britain. Of his liking for the platform he 
gives us good evidence: 

"As for ourselves," he says, late in his career, "save in rare and peculiar 
circumstances, good-bye to the lecturing platform, while we try for the rest 
of our life to imitate the Minister who said, 'This one thing I do!' There 
are exhilirations about lecturing that one finds it hard to break from, and 
many a minister who thought himself reformed of lecturing has, overtempted, 
gone up to the American Library or Boston Lyceum Bureau and diank down 
raw a hundred lecturing engagements. Still, a man once in a while finds a 
new pair of spectacles to look through." 

Dr. Talmage began on January 6, 1895, the first of a series of sermons 
at the Academy of Music, New York. The movement was kept up for a few 
weeks and then it was discontinued. 

INGENIOUS PLAN TO REACH MILLIONS. 

One of the most ingenious plans to secure a wide usefulness for his ser- 
mons was adopted by Dr. Talmage in connection with Louis Klopsch of the 



196 THE QUALITIES OF TALMAGEAN ORATORY. 



Christian Herald. The sermons were put into type and sent out in advance 
to hundreds of newspapers in the United States and Canada for simultaneous 
publication on a given day. By this means readers of journals having an 
aggregate circulation of millions had before them each week the vivid, thrill- 
ing pulpit utterances of the Brooklyn preacher. 

It was urged against this scheme that most of the newspapers printed 
the matter as telegraph, prefacing it with a line of introduction and a Brook- 
lyn date, thus conveying to their readers the impression that wire tolls had 
been paid; in other words, that the paper had displayed a lot of enterprise 
in getting the matter, which impression was false and misleading. The 
answer of Dr. Talmage's supporters was that he had never countenanced the 
deception, but that the whole effect of the publications was good in spite of it. 

To newspaper men Dr. Talmage was always considerate. It was a revela- 
tion to those who had only seen him in the pulpit to interview him in his study. 
He lost entirely the fervid, aggressive, militant quality which affected the 
nerves of his listeners. He was a genial, kindly and dignified man. 

But on the platform — the pulpit was only a figure of speech so far as he 
was concerned — he followed to the letter the idea of Demosthenes when, 
being asked to define what eloquence was, he said: "Action! Action! Ac- 
tion !" Dr. Talmage was always moving. His gestures were rarely graceful ; 
but they always impressed his hearers. He was as different from Henry 
Ward Beecher as day from night, but for many years he divided with the 
Plymouth pastor the honors of being the first clerical orator in Brooklyn and 
in the world. 



CHAPTER XII. 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 

INTEREST SHOWN IN LIEN AND THEIR EMPLOYMENTS HIS DISPLAY OF THE 

PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE OF COMMERCIAL TRAVELERS^ CLERKS AND TELEG- 
RAPHERS FINDS SOMETHING IN THE BIBLE THAT APPLIES DIRECTLY TO 

EVERYONE. 

As a student of men Talmage must take rank with the prominent novel- 
ists and dramatists of America, if not of the world. The knowledge obtained 
from this source came very near to wisdom, if in fact it did not reach to that 
high altitude of the mind. But he was a preacher first, last and all the time. 
Whatever he discovered that was new or strange to him he immediately 
applied to it the standard of the gospel. If it stood the test he catalogued it 
among the things to be commended. If it failed it went for illustration into 
the cabinet of things to be condemned. And what a store of these "points 
in character'^ he had collected and classified! Read any one of his sermons 
and you cannot but be astounded at the wealth of its homely figures evidently 
picked up bit by bit from quick and acute observation of people during the 
self-forgetful moments of their active life. He evidently cared little for men 
and women on dress parade. Few of his illustrations are drawn from super- 
ficial surroundings. He fished always in deep water, and for game fish. It 
is said of him that he never made a journey of ten miles on a railroad train 
without forming the acquaintance and learning something of the life of at 
least one more person. His memory was trained to remember everything 
that was striking or unusual, and this continual search after new material 
made it possible for him to preach a special sermon to any class of men on 
the shortest possible notice ; to draw his illustrations for its development and 
clinch his argument with happy illustrations from the every-day lives of the 
people to whom he was talking. This was perhaps the source of his great 

197 



198 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



strength with his congregations which assembled from all walks of life. In 
the Tabernacle the poor touched elbows with the rich, and the fair, soft hand 
of the banker was lost in the broad, calloused palm of the puddler from the 
steel works. More strange than this, the sermons preached to that mixed 
assembly of urbanites was read with equal interest in the farm house, in the 
logging camp, in the cowboy's shack and in the cabin of the miner. Talmage 
may have lacked form in the pulpit, may have erred in judgment as to the 
polite way to say things — if indeed he took any thought of word, attitude or 
gesture when once he had warmed to his subject — ^but he never missed the 
essential features of his message. He went to the fountain-head of knowledge 
for his facts ; he found them in the heart of man, and he found the heart of 
every other man ready to receive them as experiences in their own lives. 
Some one has said that feeling is elemental, and nothing that one person feels 
can be strange to any other person. Whether this be true or not, Talmage 
was universal enough to select for his illustrations feelings that are elemental 
so that his meaning was never obscure, no matter what his subject. 

It is marvelous that a man should have spoken so much and written so 
much on such a variety of subjects and yet have uttered no sentence over which 
the critics can speculate as to its meaning. Every thought, as it rose in his 
mind, seems to have crystallized as a separate entity and shot forth a distinct 
Thing which cannot by any possibility be mistaken for any other thing. 

The faculty of Talmage to specialize in his sermons is well illustrated in 
a series of three discourses delivered, one to commercial travelers, one to 
clerks and one to telegraph operators. For the first he took his text from 
Nahum, 2 14 : 

"The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall jostle one against 
another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like 
the lightnings." 

*Tt has been found out that many of the arts and discoveries which we 
supposed were peculiar to our own age are merely the restoration of the arts 
and discoveries of thousands of years ago. I suppose that the past centuries 
have forgotten more than the present century knows. It seems to me that 
they must have known thousands of years ago, in the days of Ninevah, of 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



199 



the uses of steam and its application to swift travel. In my text I hear the 
rush of the rail-train, the clang of the wheels, and the jamming of the car 
couplings. The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall jostle one against 
another in the broad ways : they shall seem like torches, they shall run like 
lightnings.' 

''Have you ever taken your position in the night, far away from a depot, 
along the track, waiting to see the rail-train come at full speed ? At first you 
heard in the distance a rumbling like the coming of a storm ; then you saw 
the flash of the head-light of the locomotive as it turned the curve; then you 
saw the wilder glare of the fiery eye of the train as it came plunging toward 
you; then you heard the shriek of the whistle that frenzied all the echoes; 
then you saw the hurricane dash of cinders; then you felt the jar of the pass- 
ing earthquake, and you saw the shot thunderbolt of the express train. Well, 
it seems that we can hear the passing of a midnight express train in my text : 
Their chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall jostle one against another 
in the broad way; they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the light- 
nings.* 

"I halt the train long enough to get on board, and I go through the cars 
and I find three-fourths of the passengers are commercial travelers. They are 
a folk peculiar to themselves, easily recognized, at home on all the trains, not 
startled by the sudden dropping of the brakes, familiar with all the railroad 
signals, can tell you what is the next station, how long the train will stop, 
what place the passengers take luncheon at; can give you information on 
almost any subject, are cosmopolitan, at home everywhere from Bangor to 
Cincinnati. They are on the eight o'clock morning train, on the noon train, 
on the midnight train. You take a berth in a sleeping car, and either above 
you or beneath you is one of these gentlemen. There are 30,000 professed 
commercial travellers in New York City, 100,000 professed commercial trav- 
ellers in the United States ; but 500,000 would not include all those who are 
sometimes engaged in this service. They spend millions of dollars every day 
in the hotels and in the rail-trains. They have their official newspaper organ. 
They have their mutual benefit association, 2,000 names on the rolls, and have 
already distributed more than $68,000 among the families of deceased mem- 



200 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN, 



bers. They are ubiquitous, unique, and tremendous for good or evil. All the 
tendencies of merchandise are toward their multiplication. The house that 
stands back on its dignity and waits for customers to come, instead of going 
to seek bargain-makers, will have more and more unsalable goods on the 
shelf, and will gradually lose its control of the markets, while the great, enter- 
prising and successful houses will have their agents on all the trains, and 
'their chariots will rage in the streets, they shall jostle one against another in 
the broad ways; they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the light- 
nings.' 

MEN LIKE TO BE PRAYED FOB. 

'T think commercial travelers can stand a sermon of warm-hearted sym- 
pathy. If you have any words of good cheer for them, you had better utter 
them. If yO'U have any good, honest prayers in their behalf, they will be 
greatly obliged to you. I never knew a man yet who did not like to be prayed 
for; I never knew a man yet that did not like to be helped. It seems to me 
that the sermon I preach this morning is timely. At this season of the year 
there are tens of thousands of men going out to gather the spring trade. The 
month of March, in all our commercial establishments, is a very busy month. 
In a few days our national perplexities will all be settled, and then look out 
for the brightest ten years of national prosperity which this country has ever 
witnessed. All our astute commercial men feel that we are standing at the 
opening gate of wonderful prosperity. Let the manufacturers put the bands 
on their wheels, and the merchants open a new set of account books in place 
of those filled with long columns of bad debts. Let us start on a new com- 
mercial campaign. Let us drop the old tune of 'Naomi,' and take up 'Ariel' 
or 'Antioch.' 'Oh,' you say, 'it is impossible that this land after so much 
depression should be revived.' Why, in 1857 there were failures to the 
amount of $291,000,000; we got over that; we will get over this (panic of 
1873). God hath not dealt so with any nation; as for His judgments we 
have not known them. Praise ye the Lord. 

"Now you, the commercial traveler, have received orders from the head 
men of the firm that you are to start on a long excursion. You have your 
patterns all assorted and prepared. You have them put up in bundles or 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN, 



201 



cases, and marked. You have full instructions as to prices. You know on 
what prices you are to stand firm, and from what prices you may retreat 
somewhat. You have your valise or trunk, or both, packed. If I were a 
stranger I would have no right to look into that valise, but as I am your 
brother I will take the liberty. I look into the valise and I congratulate you 
on all these comfortable articles of apparel. The seasons are so changeable 
you have not taken a single precaution too many. Some night you will get 
out in the snowbank and have to walk three or four miles until you get to 
the railroad station, and you will want all these comforts and conveniences. 
But will you excuse me if I make two or three suggestions about this valise? 
You say, 'Certainly, as we are having a plain, frank talk this morning, I will 
not be offended at any honorable suggestion.* 

A PEEP INTO A VALISE. 

*What is this little package in the valise? 'Oh,' you say, 'that is a pack 
of cards.' Well, my brother, you do not want to be lumbered with unnec- 
essary baggage, and if you want to play cards you will find persons equipped 
with them on all the rail-trains and at all the depots; besides that, there are 
Christian people, weak-headed if you will, but still Christian people, who 
do not Hke cards, and who do not like to trade with people who play 
cards. 'But,' you say, 'there is certainly no harm in a pack of cards, 
is there?' Instead of directly answering your question, I will give 
you, as my opinion, that there are thousands of men with as strong 
a brain as you who have gone through card-playing into games of chance, 
and have dropped down into the gambler's life and into the gambler's hell. 
A Christian gentleman came from England to this country. He brought 
with him $70,000 in money. He proposed to invest the money. Part of it 
was his own; part of it was his mother's. He went into a Christian church; 
was coldly received, and said to himself, 'Well, if that is the kind of Christian 
people they have in America, I don't want to associate with them much.* 
Soi he joined a card-playing party. He went a little further on, and, after 
- a while, he was in games of chance, and lost all of the $70,000. Worse than 
that, he lost all his good morals; and, on the night that he blew his brains 



202 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



out, he wrote to the lady to whom he was affianced an apology for the crime 
he was about to commit, and saying in so many words: 'My first step to 
ruin was the joining of that card party.' 

BOTTIiE-CAmiYIlSrG DAITGEHQITS. 

''Well, I don't want to be too inquisitive, but what is this other little bun- 
dle in the valise? 'Oh,' you say, 'that is a brandy flask.' Well, now, my 
brother, just empty the contents, and fill it with cholera mixture. It is 
very important, when you are absent from home and on the train, that you 
have medicine which you can take in case of sudden sickness. Then if on 
a long route, your friends expect you to take them to the end of the train, 
and pour out some disinfectant into the begrimed glass at the water-tank, 
while they are standing around, smacking their lips, waiting for a drink, pour 
out some of this cholera mixture. 

"Now, you have taken my advice about two things. I have only one 
more counsel to give you, and then I will bother you no more with your 
baggage. Make an addition of some good, wholesome reading. Let it 
be in history, or a poem, or a book of pure fiction, or some volume that will 
give you information in regard to yo'ur line of business. Then add to that 
a Bible in round, beautiful type — small type is bad for the eyes anywhere, 
but peculiarly killing in the jolt of the rail-train. Put your railroad guide 
and your Bible side by side^ — the one to show you the route through this 
world, and the other to show you the route to the next world. 'Oh,' you 
say, 'that is superfluous, for now in all the hotels, in the parlor, you will find 
a Bible, and in nearly all the rooms of the guests you will find one.' But, 
my brother, that is not your Bible. You want your own hat, your own 
coat, your own blanket, your own Bible. 'But,' you say, 'I am not a Chris- 
tian, and you ought not to expect me to carry a Bible.' My brother, a great 
many people are not Christians who carry a Bible. Besides that, before 
you get home, you might become a Christian, and you would feel awkward 
without a copy. Besides that, you might get bad news from home. I see 
you with trembling hand opening the telegram saying, 'George is dying,' 
or, 'Fannie is dead — come home.' As you sit in the train, stunned with the 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



203 



calamity, going home, you will have no taste for the newspapers, or for 
fine scenery, or for conversation, and yet you must keep your thoughts 
employed, or you will go stark mad. Then you will want a Bible, whether 
you read it or not. It will be a comfort to have it near you — that book full 
of promises which have comforted other people in like calamity. Whether 
you study the promises or not, you will want that book near you. 

SUNDAY WORK TJNPBOFITABLE. 

"Now you are all ready to start. You have your valise in the right hand, 
and you have your blanket and shawl-strap in the left hand. Good-by! 
May you have a pro^sperous journey; large sales — great percentages. Oh, 
there is one thing I forgot to ask you about! What train are you going 
to take? 'Well,' you say, 'I will take the five o'clock Sunday afternoon 
train.' Why? *0h,' you say, 'I shall save a day by that, and on Monday 
morning I will be in the distant city, in the commercial establishment by the 
time the merchants come down.' My brother, you are starting wrong. If 
you clip off something from the Lord's day, the Lord will clip off something 
from your lifetime successes. Sabbath-breaking pays no better for this 
world than it pays for the next. There was a large establishment in New 
York that said to a young man: *We want you to start to-morrow after- 
noon — Sunday afternoon — at five o'clock, for Pittsburg.' 'Ah,' repHed the 
young man, 1 never travel on Sunday.' Well,' said the head man of the 
firm, 'you must go; we have got to make time, and you must go to-morrow 
afternoon at five o'clock.' The young man said: 'I can't go, it is against 
my conscience; I can't go.' 'Well,' said the head man of the firm, 'then you 
will have to lose your situation; there are plenty of men who would like 
to go.' The temptation was too great for the young man, and he suc- 
cumbed to it. He obeyed orders. He left on the five o'clock train Sunday 
afternoon for Pittsburg. Do you want the sequel in very short metre? That 
young man has gone down into a life of dissipation. What has become of 
the business firm? Bankrupt — one of the firm a confirmed gambler. 

"Out of every week, get twenty-four hours for yourself. Your employer, 
young man, has no right to swindle you out of that rest. The bitter curse of 



204 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



Almighty God will rest upon that commercial establishment which expects 
its employes to break the Sabbath. What right has a Christian merchant 
to sit down in church on the Sabbath when his clerks are traveling abroad 
through the land on that day? Get up, professed Christian merchant, so 
acting. You have no business here. Go out and call that boy back. There 
was a merchant in 1837, who wrote: 1 should have been a dead man had it 
not been for the Sabbath. Obliged to work from morning until night 
through the whole week, I felt on Saturday, especially on Saturday afternoon, 
that I must have rest. It was like going into a dense fog. Everything 
looked dark and gloomy, as if nothing could be saved. I dismissed all and 
kept the Sabbath in the old way. On Monday it was all sunshine, but had 
it not been for the Sabbath, I have no doubt I should have been in my 
grave.' 

**Now, I say if the Sabbath is good for the employer, it is good for the 
employe. Young man, the dollar that you earn on the Sabbath is a red-hot 
dollar; and if you can put it into a bag with five thousand honest dollars, 
that red-hot dollar will burn a hole through the bottom of the bag, and let 
out all the five thousand dollars with it. 

BEAD GOOD BOOKS ALWAYS. 

"But I see you change your mind, and you are going on Monday morn- 
ing, and I see you take the train — the Hudson River, or the Erie, or the 
Pennsylvania, or the Harlem, or the New Haven train.. For a few weeks, 
now, you will pass half of your time in the rail-train. How are you going 
to occupy the time? Open the valise, and take out a book and begin to 
read. Magnificent opportunities have our commercial travelers for gaining 
information above all other clerks or merchants. The best place in the 
world to study is a rail-train. I know it by experience. Do not do as some 
commercial travelers do — as many of them do, as most of them do — sit 
reading the same newspaper over and over again, and all the advertisements 
through and through; then sit for two or three hours calculating the profits 
they expect to make; then spending two or three hours looking listlessly out 
of the window; then spending three or four hours in the smoking-car, the 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



205 



nastiest place in Christendom, talking with men who do not know as much 
as you do. Instead of that, call WilHam Shakespeare, the dramatist, and 
John Ruskin, the essayist, and Tennyson, the poet, and Bancroft and 
Macauley, the historians, and Ezekiel and Paul, the inspired men of God, 
and ask them to sit with yO'U, and talk with you, as they will if you ask them. 
I hear you say: 'I do wish I could get out of this business of commercial 
traveling; I don't like it.' My brother, why don't you read yourself out? 
Give me a young man of ordinary intellect and good eye-sight, and let him 
devote to valuable reading the time not actually occupied in commercial 
errand, and in six years he will be qualified for any position for which he is 
ambitious. 

GET THE HABIT OF STUDY. 

" 'Oh,' you say, '1 have no taste for reading.' Now, that is the trouble, 
but it is no excuse. There was a time, my brother, when you had no taste 
for cigars, they made you very sick, but you persevered until cigars have 
become to you a luxury. Now, if you can afford to struggle on to get a bad 
habit, is it not worth while to struggle on to get a good habit like that of 
reading? There is no excuse for a man lacking inforriiation, if he have the 
rare opportunities of a commercial traveler. Improve your mind. Re- 
member the 'Learned Blacksmith,' who, while blowing the bellows, set his 
book up against the brickwork, and became acquainted with fifty languages. 
Remember the scholarly Gifford, who, while an apprentice, wrought out the 
arithmetical problem with his awl on a piece of leather. Remember Aber- 
crombie, who snatched here and there a fragmentary five minutes from an ex- 
hausting profession, and wrote immortal treatises on ethics." 

Talmage shows in the following paragraphs a deep insight into the laws 
of trade: 

NECESSARY KNOWLEDGE OF GOODS. 

"Be ashamed to sell foreign fabrics or fruits unless you know something 
about the looms that wove them or the vineyards that grew them," says 
the wise preacher. "Understand all about the laws that control commer- 
cial life; about banking; about tariffs; about markets; about navigation; 



206 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



about foreign people — their characteristics and their political revolutions 
as they affect ours; about the harvests of Russia, the vineyards of Italy, the 
tea fields of China. Learn about the great commercial centers of Carthage, 
and Assyria, and Phoenicia. Read all about the Medici of Florence, mighty 
in trade, mightier in philanthropies. You belong to the royal family of 
merchants — be worthy of that royal family. Oh, take my advice this morn- 
ing, and turn the years of weariness into years of luxury. Take those hours 
you spend at the depot, waiting for the delayed train, and make them Pis- 
gah heights from which you can view the promised land. When you are 
waiting for the train, hour after hour in the depot, do not spend your time 
reading the sewing-machine advertisements, and looking up the time-tables 
of routes you will never take, going the twentieth time to the door to see 
whether the train is coming, bothering the ticket agent and telegraph oper- 
ator with questions which you ask merely because you want to pass away 
the time. But rather summon up the great essayists, and philosophers, 
and story-tellers, and thinkers of the ages, and have them entertain you." 
The picture he paints in the following words is a real Verestchagen: 
"But you have come now near the end of your railroad travel. I can 
tell by the motion of the car that they are pulling the patent brakes down. 
The engineer rings the bell at the crossing. The train stops. 'AH out!' 
cries the conductor. You dismount from the train. You reach the hotel. 
The landlord is glad to see you^ — very glad! He stretches out his hand 
across the registry book with all the disinterested warmth of a brother! You 
are assigned an apartment. In that uninviting apartment . you stay only 
long enough to make yourself presentable. You descend then into the read- 
ing room, and there you find the commercial travelers seated around a long 
table, with a great elevation in the center covered with advertisements; 
while there are inkstands sunken in the bed of the table, and scattered all 
around rusty steel pens and patches of blotting paper. Of course, you will 
not stay there. You saunter out among the merchants. You present your 
letters of introduction and authority. You begin business. Now, let me 
say there are two or three things you ought to remember. First, that all 
the trade you get by the practice of 'treating' will not stick. If you cannot 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN, 



207 



get custom except by tipping a wine-glass with somebody, you had better 
not get his custom. An old commercial traveler gives as his experience 
that trade gotten by 'treating' always damages the house that gets it, in one 
way or the other. 

"I CHARGE YOU, TELL THE TRUTH!" 

"Again, I charge you, tell the whole truth about anything you sell. Ly- 
ing commercial travelers will precede you. Lying commercial travelers 
will come right after you into the same store. Doi not let their unfair com- 
petition tempt you from the straight line. It is an awful bargain that a man 
makes when he sells his goods and his soul at the same time. 

"But it is almost night, and you go back to the hotel. Now comes the 
mighty tug for the commercial traveler. Tell me where he spends his 
evenings, and I will tell you where he will spend eternity, and I will tell you 
what will be his worldly prospects. There is an abundance of choice. There 
is your room with the books. There are the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation rooms. There are the week-night services of the Christian churches. 
There is the gambling saloon. There is the theater. There is the house 
of infamy. Plenty of places to go to. But which, O immortal man, which? 
O God, which? 'Well,' you say, T guess, then, I will go to — I guess I will 
go to the gambling saloon.' You will go first to look. Then you will go 
to play. You will make $ioo, you will make $500, you will make $1,000, 
you will make $1,500 — then you will lose all. These wretches of the gam- 
bling saloon know how to tempt you. But, mark this: all gamblers die 
poor. They may make fortunes — great fortunes — but' they lose them. 

<'HER STEPS TAKE HOLD ON HELL." 

"Then there is the house of infamy. Commercial travelers have told 
me that in the letter-box at the hotel, within one hour after their arrival, 
they have had letters of evil solicitation in that direction. It is far away 
from home. Nobody will know it. Commercial travelers have sometimes 
gone in that evil path. Why not you? Halt! "There are oither gates of 
ruin, through which a man may go and yet come out, but that gate has a 



208 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



spring lock which snaps him in forever! He who goes there is damned 
already. He may seem to be comparatively free for a little while, but he is 
only on the limits, and the Satanic police have their eyes upon him to bring 
him in at any moment. The hot curse of God is on that crime, and, because 
of it, there are men here to-day whose heaven was blotted out ten years 
ago. There is no danger that they be lost; they are lost now. I look 
through their glaring eyeballs down into the lowest cavern of hell! O de- 
stroyed spirit, why comest tho-u in here to-day? Dost think I have power 
to break open the barred gateway of the penitentiary of the damned? There 
is a passage in Proverbs I somewhat hesitate to read, but I do not hesitate 
long : 'At the window of my house I looked through my casement, and be- 
hold among the simple ones, I discovered among the youths a young man, 
void of understanding, passing through the street near her corner, and he 
went the way to her house, in the twilight, in the evening, in the black and 
dark night. He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, 
or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, till a dart strikes thro-ugh his liver.^ 



TEMPTATIONS OF STTCCESS AND FAILURE. 

"But now the question is still open: Where will you spend your even- 
ing? O commercial travelers, how much will you give me to put you on 
the right track? Witho'Ut charging you a farthing I will prescribe for you 
a plan which will save you for this world and the next, if you will take it. 
Go before you leave home to the Young Men's Christian Association of 
the city where you live. Get from them letters of introduction. Carry 
them oiut to the towns and cities where you go. If there be no such asso- 
ciation in the place you visit, then present them at the door of Christian 
churches, and hand them over to the pastors. Be not slow to arise in the 
devotional meeting and say: 'I am a commercial traveler; I am far away from 
home, and I come in here to-night to seek Christian society.* The best 
houses and the highest style of amusement will open before you, and, instead 
of your being dependent upon the leprous crew who hang around the hotels, 
wanting to show you all the slums of the city, on the one condition that 
you will pay their expenses, you will get the benediction of God in every 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN, 



209 



town you visit. Remember tliis, that whatever place you visit, bad in- 
fluences will seek you out; good influences you must seek out. 

''O commercial travelers, I pray for you to-day the all-sustaining grace 
of God. There are two kinds; of days when you are especially in need 
of divine grace. The one, the day when you have no success — when you 
fail to make a sale, and yo u are very much disappointed, and you 
go back to your hotel discomfited. That night you will be tempted 
to go to strong drink and rush into bad dissipations. The other day, when 
you will especially need divine grace, will be when you had a day of great 
success, and the devil tells you y ou must go and celebrate that success. Then 
you will want the grace of God to restrain you from rollicking indulgences. 
Yes, there will be a third day \^^hen you will need to be Christians, and that 
will be the last day of your life. I do not know where you will spend it. Per- 
haps in your house, more proba bly in a rail-car, or a steamer, or the strange 
hotel. I see you on your last commercial errand. You have bidden good-by 
to the family at home for the last time. The train of your earthly existence 
is nearing the depot of the gra ve. The brakes are falling. The bell rings 
at the terminus. The train stops. All out for eternity! Show your ticket 
now for getting into the gate of the shining city — the red ticket washed in 
the blood of the Lamb." 

SEB MON TO CLERKS. 

» In another sermon to Clerks he discovers an equally deep knowledge of 
mercantile methods and as fine an appreciation of the trials and temptations, 
sympathies and aspirations of this great army of the employed. As is his 
usual custom, he prefaces his oration with a homily on the actions of man- 
kind. He says: 

'There are certain styles of behavior which lead to usefulness, honor, 
and permanent success, and ttiere are certain styles of behavior which lead 
to dust, dishonor, and morsd default. I would like to fire the am- 
bition of young people. I have no sympathy with those who would 
prepare young folks for life by whittling down their expectations. That 
man or woman will be worth nothing to church or state who begins life 
cowed down. The business of Christianity is not to quench but to direct 
human ambition. Therefore Jit is that I come out this morning and utter 



« 



210 UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 

words of encouragement to those who are o ccupied as clerks in the stores, 
and shops, and banking-hoiuses of the country i. The people in this audience 
who are clerks are not an exceptional class. They belong to a great com- 
pany of tens of thousands who are in this cou: ntry, amid circumstances which 
will either make or break them for time ar id eternity. I should be very 
slow to acknowledge that the clerks, male anc 1 female, of other cities, are any 
more honest or faithful than the clerks of < Dur own city. Many of these 
people have already achieved a Christian mai iliness and a Christian woman- 
liness which will be their passport to any pos ition. I have seen their trials. 
I have watched their perplexities. There a re evils abroad which need to 
be hunted down, and dragged out into the noonday light. 

EMPLOYMENT A SC HOOI,. 

"In the first place, I counsel clerks to rer nember that for the most part 
their clerkship is only a school from which Uhey are to be graduated. It 
takes about eight years to get into one of the learned professions. It takes 
about eight years to get to be a merchant. 1 Some of you will be clerks all 
your lives, but the vast majority of you are only in a transient position. 
After a while, some December day, the head men of the firm will call you 
into the back office, and they will say to you: 'Now, you have done well by 
us; we are going to do well by you. We in\ ite you to have an interest in 
oiur concern.' You will bow to that edict vei ry gracefully. Getting into a 
street car to go home, an old comrade will me€ it you and say: 'What makes 
you look so happy to-night.' 'Oh,' you will say, 'nothing, nothing.' But 
in a few days your name will blossom on the sign. Either in the store or 
bank where you are now, or in some other s tore or bank, you will take a 
higher position than that which you now occ :upy. So I feel to-day that I 
am standing before people who will yet have their hand on the helm of the 
world's commerce, and you will turn it this w ay or that; now clerks, but to 
be bankers, importers, insurance company di rectors, shippers, contractors, 
superintendents of railroads — your voice might y 'on 'change' — standing fore- 
most in the great financial and religious enterp rises of the day. For, though 
we who are in professions may, on the platforn i, plead for the philanthropies, 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



211 



after all, the merchants must come forth with their millions to sustain the 
movement. 

COLLEGE EDUCATION- ITOT NECESSAHY. 

"Be, therefore, patient and diligent in this transient position. You are 
now where you can learn things you can never learn in any otht-r place. 
What you consider your disadvantages are your grand opportunity'. You 
see an affluent father some day come down on a prominent street w ith his 
son, who has just graduated from the University, and establishing l.iim in 
business, putting $50,000 of capital in the store. Well, you are emdous. 
You have advantages over that young man which he has not over you. As 
well might I come down to the docks when a vessel is about to sail for Val- 
paraiso, and say: 'Let me pilot this ship out of the Narrows.' Why., I 
would sink crew and cargo before I got out of the harbor, simply becaase 
I know nothing about pilotage. Wealthy sea captains put their sons befor e 
the mast for the reason that they know that it is the only place where the}' 
can learn to be successful sailors. It is only under drill that people get to 
understand pilotage and navigation, and I want you to understand that it 
takes no more skill to conduct a vessel out of the harbor and across the sea, 
than to steer a commercial establishment clear of the rocks. You see every 
day the folly of people going into a business they know nothing about. A 
man makes a fortune in one business; thinks there is another occupation 
more comfortable; goes into it and sinks all. Many of the commercial 
establishments of our cities are giving to their clerks a mercantile education 
as thorough as Yale, or Harvard, or Princeton are giving scientific attain- 
ment to the students matriculated. The reason there are so many men 
foundering in business from year to year, is because their early mercantile 
education was neglected. Ask these men in high commercial circles, and 
they will tell you they thank God for this severe discipline of their early 
clerkship. You can afford to endure the wilderness march, if it is going to 
end in the vineyards and orchards of the promised land. 

WOMEN THE EQUALS OF MEN". 

"But yoiu say: Will the womanly clerks in our stores have promotion?' 
Yes. Time is coming when women will be as well paid for their toil in 



212 / UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN, 

mercantile tocles as men are now paid for their toil. Time is coming when 
a woman v//ill be allowed to do anything she can do well. It is only a little 
while ago/ when women knew nothing of telegraphy, and they were kept 
out of a ff^reat many commercial circles where they are now welcome; and 
the time/ will go on until the woman who at one counter in a store sells 
$5,000 v//orth of goods in a year, will get as high a salary as the man who at 
the oth^er counter of the same store sells $5,000 worth of goods. All honor 
to Lyf/iia, the Christian saleswoman. And in passing, I may as well say 
that y/ou merchants who have female clerks in your stores ought to treat 
them/ with great courtesy and kindness. When they are not positively eri- 
gagejd, let them sit down. In England and in the United States physicians 
hav/e protested against the habit of coimpelling the female clerks in the 
stc/res to stand when it was not necessary for them to stand. Therefore, 
I /add to the protest of physicians the protest of the Christian Church, and 
ir/i the name of good health, and that God who has made the womanly con- 
/ititution more delicate than man's, I demand that you let her sit down. 

''The second counsel I have to give to the clerks who are* here to-day, 
is that you seek out what are the lawful regulations of your establishment 
and then submit to them. Every well-ordered house has its usages. In 
military life, there must be order and discipline. Those people who do not 
learn how to obey, will never know how to command. I will tell you what 
young man will make ruin, financial and moral: it is the young man who 
thrusts his thumb into his vest and says: 'Nobody shall dictate to me, I am 
my own master; I will not submit to the regulations of this house.' Between 
an establishment in which all the employes are under thorough discipline 
and the establishment in which the employes do about as they choose, is 
the difference between success and failure — between rapid accumulation 
and utter bankruptcy. Do not come to the store ten minutes after the 
time. Be there within two seconds, and let it be two seconds before instead 
of two seconds after. Do not think anything too insignificant to do well. 
Do not say, 'It's only just once.' From the most important transaction in 
commerce down to the particular style in which you tie a string around a 
bundle, obey orders. Do not get easily disgusted. While others in the 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MA. 



213 



store may lounge, or fret, or complain, you go with re^'dy hands, and cheer- 
ful face, and contented spirit to your work. When the bugle sounds, the 
good soldier asks no questions, but shoulders his knapsack, fills his canteen 
and Hstens for the command to 'March!' 

EMPLOYER'S SUCCESS HONORS EM4»L0YES. 

"Do not get the idea that your interests and those of your employer are 
antagonistic. His success will be your honor. His embarrassment will be 
your dismay. Expose none of the frailties of the mrm. Tell no store secrets. 
Do not blab! Rebuff those persons who come to find out from clerks what 
ought never be known outside the store. Do /not be among those young 
men who take on a mysterious air when somej/hing is said against the firm 
that employs them, as much as to say: T colild tell you some things if I 
would, but I won't.' Do not be among those who imagine they can build 
themselves up by pulling somebody else down. Be not ashamed to be a 
subaltern. / 

"Again, I counsel clerks in this house to search out what are the unlawful 
and dishonest demands of an establishment, and resist them. In the six 
thousand years that have passed, there has/ never been an occasion when it 
was one's duty to sin against God. It is pever right to do wrong. If the 
head men of the firm expect of you disho^4esty, disappoint them. 'Oh,' you 
say, 'I should lose my place then.' Betjter lose your place than lose your 
soul. But you will not lose your place. C/^hristian heroism is always honored. 
You go to the head man of your store, /and say: 'Sir, I want to serve you; 
I want to oblige you; it is from no la/ck of industry on my part, but this 
thing seems to me to be wrong, and ijc is a sin against my conscience, it is 
a sin against God, and I beg you, sir, Ito excuse me.' He may flush up and 
swear, but he will cool down, and he vHll have more admiration for you than 
for those who submit to his evil dictation; and while they sink, you will rise. 
Do not, because oif seeming tempon-jiry advantage, give up your character, 
young man. Under God, that is the/only thing you have to build on. Give 
up that, you give up everything. T/hat employer asks a young man to hurt 
himself for time and for eternity, Whc^ expects him to make a wrong entry, 



214 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



or change an invoice, or say goods cost so much when they cost less, or 
impose upon the verdancy of a customer, or misrepresent a style of fabric. 
How dare he demand of you anything so insolent? 

INCONSIDERATION OF CUSTOMERS. 

"Again, I counsel all clerks to conquer the trials of their particular posi- 
tion. One great trial for clerks is the inconsideration of customers. There 
are people who are entirei'y polite everyw^here else, but grufif and dictatorial, 
and contemptible when th^iy come into a store to buy anything. There are 
thousands of men and women who go from store to store to price things, 
without any idea of purch.ase. They are not satisfied until every roll of 
goods is brought down and they have pointed out all the real or imaginary 
defects. They try on all kinds of kid gloves, and stretch them out of shape 
and they put on all styles of clo-ak and walk to the mirror to see how it would 
look, and then they sail out of the store, saying, T will not take it to-day;' 
which means, T don't want it at all,' leaving the clerk amid a wreck of rib- 
bons, and laces, and cloths, to smooth out a thousand dollars' worth of goods 
— not a cent of which did that man or woman buy or expect to buy. Now 
I call that dishonesty on the part: of the customer. If a boy runs into a store 
and takes a roll of cloth off the counter, and sneaks out into the street, you 
all join in the cry pell-mell: 'Stop thief!' When I see you go into a store 
not expecting to buy anything but to price things, stealing the time of the 
clerk, and stealing the time of his employer, I say, too: 'Stop thief!' 

"If I were asked which class oi persons most need the grace of God 
amid their annoyances, I would say.: 'Dry-goods clerks.' All the indigna- 
tion of customers about the high prices comes on the clerk. For instance: 
A great war comes. The manufactories are closed. The people go off to 
battle. The price of goods runs up. A customer comes into a store. Goods 
have gone up. 'How much is that v;orth?' 'A dollar!' 'A dollar! Out- 
rageous. A dollar!' Why, who is to blame? Who is to blame for the fact 
that it has got to be a dollar? Does the indignation go out to the manu- 
factures on the banks of the Merrimac because they have closed up? No. 
Does the indignation go out to the employer at his country seat? No. It 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



215 



comes to the clerk. He got 
the rents. Of course, the clerk 

DRAMA OE T 



In this sermon he runs the 
partment store, now sympathizi 
his employer, now warning hi 
employment, now painting in 
temptations, now hurling inved 
ployer who grinds his help into 



) the war. He levied the taxes. He put up 



HE DEPARTMENT STOEE. 



whole course of the drama of the great de- 
ng with the clerk who is unjustly treated by 
m against the manifold temptations of his 
lurid colors the results of yielding to those 
:ives of wrath at the selfish and heartless em- 
the dust for sake of gain, now finding sym- 
pathy for both in their endlesijs competitive struggle for existence. . Then 
he closes this remarkable addrejss with this magnificent peroration: 

^'After the last store has beclm closed, after the last bank has gone down, 



after the shufile of the quick fe 
after the long line of merchanti 



;et on the Custom House steps has stopped, 
nen on the sea have taken sail of flame, after 
Brooklyn, and New York, and London, and Vienna, have gone down into 
the grave where Thebes, and Babylon, and Tyre lie buried, after the great 
fire-bells of the judgment-day Have tolled at the burning of a world — on that 
day, all the affairs of banking-liouses and stores will come up for inspection. 
Oh, what an opening of account books! Side by side, the clerks and the 
men who employed them — th^ people who owned thread-and-needle stores 
on the same footing with thei Stewarts, and the Delanos, and the Abbotts, 
and the Barings. Every invoice made out — all the labels of goods — all cer- 
tificates of stock — all lists o^f prices — all private marks of the firm, now ex- 
plained so everybody can understand them. All lamps of cities that were 
never built, but in which lots were sold. All bargains. All gougings. All 
snap judgments. All false jentries. All adulteration of liquors with cop- 
peras and strychnine. All mixing of teas, and sugars, and coffees, and syr- 
ups with cheaper material. All embezzlements of trust funds. All swindles 
in coal, and iron, and oil, and silver, and stocks. All Swartouts, and Hunt- 
ingtons, and Ketchums. On that day when the cities of this world are 
smoking in the last conflagr.ation, the trial will go on; and down in an 
avalanche of destruction will go those who wronged man or woman, insulted 



216 



UNIVERSALITY OF \THE MAN. 



God and defied the judgment. Oh, that wi'll be a great day for you, honest 
Christian clerk. No getting up early; no r'etiring late; no walking around 
with weary limbs; but a mansion in which to live, and a realm of light, and 
life, and joy over which to hold everlasting dominion. Hoist him up from 
glory to glory, and from song to song, and ifrom throne to throne; for while 
others go down into the sea with their gold like a millstone hanging to 
their neck, this one shall come up the heights of amethyst and alabaster, 
holding in his right hand the pearl of great price in a sparkling, glittering, 
flaming casket 

SERMON TO TELEGHaJPHERS. 

In a sermon to telegraphers he again shows his seemingly inexhaustible 
knowledge of the world's history and affaiirs, as well as of men and their 
passions. "Last Monday," he says, "while I was looking, in the Western 
Union telegraph office, at the new electro-naotor telegraph printing instru- 
ment, there unrolled before me a message plainly printed from the operator 
in the city of Washington, giving me his compliments, and saying: *How 
do you like this performance?' leaving me struck through, as never before, 
with a sense of the almost omniscient and omnipresent power of American 
telegraphy. What painstaking since the day when Thales, 600 years before 
Christ, discovered frictional electricity by the rubbing of amber; and Win- 
bler, in the last century, sent electric currents along metalHc wires, until our 
day, Farraday, and Bain, and Henry, and Morsq, and Prescott, and Orton — 
some in one way and some in another way, have helped the lightning of 
heaven to come bounding along, crying: 'Herii we are!' 

STORY OF TRIAL AND STRUGGLES. 

"The whole story of telegraphy has been ajstory of trial and struggles. 
Go back to 1844, in Boston, and you see a telegraph wire reaching from 
Milk street to School street, and the people pajying twenty-five cents to see 
it operated, and the next year, 1845, lYork, you find a short tele- 

graph running up Broadway, and the people/ paying twenty-five cents to 
see it operated, the operators going to bed | hungry; their bed the hard 
floor of the office where they worked. It ha^l been struggle all the way up 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



217 



and all the way down. Sebastopol, and Austerlitz, and Gettysburg were not 
more exciting scenes than those which were seen and suffered when the 
Atlantic cable was laid in 1858, 1865 and 1866. And Wellington won no 
more brilliant victory at Waterloo than did Cyrus W. Field when he landed 
at Heart's Content Office, after thirteen years of exposure and hardship, and 
caricature, and scoffing, and telegraphed to New York City: 

" 'Heart's Content, July 27. 
" 'Arrived safely. All well. The cable laid, and in perfect order.' 

"Well might the choir of Old Trinity Church, New York, a few days 
after, celebrate the event in the presence of two hundred gowned clergymen, 
chanting while the organs rolled out the harmony: 'Oh come, let us sing 
unto the Lord; let us make a joyful noise unto the Rock of our salvation.' 
You may weave your garlands around the brow of conquerors who have 
waded chin-deep in blood to get more territory. I shall save my garlands 
for the Galvanis, and the Davys, and the Bains, and the Captain Hudsons, 
who have helped, as by the stroke of God's omnipotence, to weld the con- 
tinents together. And it has been trouble, and trial, and struggle all the 
way through. The pioneers of the telegraph were the target for the ridicule 
of two hemispheres. When the cable broke, in 1858, all the nations jeered, 
and said: 'We told you so.' The Indians on the plain, the Arabs on the 
desert, the wild beasts in India, tore up the lines. The United States Gov- 
ernment again and again has attempted to appropriate or steal the tele- 
graphs of this country, and make them a mere system of poHtical jobbery. 
Resistance to all this, and continuance amid all this, has made telegraphy in 
this country a strife, and a struggle, and a heroism. Oh, what a stride from 
the time when the Roman generals were dependent upon the signals given 
by the bonfires kindled on mountain-top, or the rockets, the torches, the 
columns of smoke, or the rotating-beam placed on high points, which in the 
time of Napoleon became enveloped in fog, so only half the message reached 
London, announcing 'Wellington defeated,' throwing the whole city into 
consternation, until on the following day, when the fog lifted, the whole 
message arrived, saying: 'Wellington defeated the French at Salamanca!' 



218 UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 

down on from those days until this time, when one telegraph company sends 
twenty million despatches in one year. 

HOW TELEGRAPHY HAS HELPED THE HOME. 

"What has this art done for the domestic circle? In sudden exigency 
how quick it brings the physician! The fire that, in a few hours, would have 
burned the beautiful home into ashes, at the call of the electric telegraph 
is put out in five minutes. You are in a distant hotel, and in a paroxysm 
of pain. Yes, you are dying alone. No rail-train could have carried your 
message swift enough. You telegraph: 'Come!' And very soon upon 
your dying vision there dawns the familiar and sympathetic face of her who 
has been to you as a sweet song ever since the day when, amid the orange 
blossoms and the sound of wedding march, you put the ring on her hand 
and promised to be faithful until death doth you part. And though you 
are far away, her breath on your dying cheek makes you feel at home and 
you look into her tearful eyes, and say: 'My dear, I am so glad you have 
come.' There is not a home in Christendom but has by telegraph been put 
under everlasting obligation. A father may travel seven days in a straight 
line, and every night before retiring receive the salutations of his house- 
hold. 

INFLUEITCE ON ART. 

"What has this art done for literature? One great curse of literature is 
verbosity — long sentences for small ideas — a whole pack of hounding adjec- 
tives after one poor noun! The economics of telegraphy came and declared: 
Tut what you have to say in ten words, or pay extra for every preposition, 
every adjective, every conjunctive.' Under this mighty pressure the land 
is learning the beauty of brevity. Men who would have taken two hours 
to tell a story, crowd, squeeze, compress, and jam it all into the ten words 
of the electric telegram. Why be a spendthrift of words? With four words 
God ordered the illuminations of two hemispheres: 'Let — there — be — light.' 
With five words the archangel shall preach the funeral sermon of the world: 
'Time — shall — ^be — no — -longer!' The world is being talked to death! And 
the American telegraph is helping to abate the nuisance. And any institu- 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



219 



tion like the telegraph, or the postoffice, that cultures in the people a health- 
ful taciturnity ought to be encouraged. Men talk too much, and women 
too! 

AID TO THE CHURCH. 

''What has this art done for the Church of God? Gathering up the 
doings of conventions, and presbyteries, and conferences, it comes bound- 
ing, saying: 'Here we are!' Years ago, when a dying English soldier in 
India telegraphed to a Christian officer, hundreds of miles away: 'What 
must I do to be saved?' the Christian officer telegraphed back: 'Believe 
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.' What a question and 
answer to go to and fro! When the Agamemnon and the Niagara had 
successfully put down the Atlantic cable, the directors in London sent the 
first telegram to the directors in New York. The song of the angels: 'Glory 
to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will to men.' When the 
great revival occurred in 1857, the John Street prayer meeting in New York 
telegraphed to the great meeting in Jaynes Hall, Philadelphia, saying: 'Chris- 
tian brethren, we greet you in brotherly love.' The inhabitants of your city 
shall go to another, saying: 'Let us go speedily tO' pray before the Lord, 
and seek the Lord of Hosts: I will go also. Praise the Lord; call upon His 
name; declare His doings among the people; make mention that His name 
is exalted.' And immediately there came over the telegraph wires from 
Philadelphia the answer: 'Jaynes Hall prayer meeting crowded; with one 
mind and heart they glorify our Father in heaven for the work He is doing 
in our city and country; the Lord hath done great things for us; may He 
who holds the seven stars in His right hand and who walks in the midst 
of the churches be with you by His spirit this day!' Ay, in 1857, the tele- 
graph was the torch that set the whole land on fire with Christian enthu- 
siasm, and 500,000 souls stepped into the kingdom of God. There is not 
a day now that Christian messages do not go over the wires. Every morn- 
ing the secular and religious news of the world is put on our breakfast tables 
by the telegraph through the newspaper — the newspaper press of this coun- 
try in one year giving $521,000 for telegraphic intelligence — the newspaper 
press in Continental Europe $11,000,000 in one year for telegraphic intelli- 



220 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



gence. The telegraph takes the whole earth in its benediction. The wires 
long enough to girdle the globe five times; from St. Kene to Brest, from 
Brest to Suez, from Suez to Bombay, from Bombay to Singapore. Oh, 
what a thrill of supremacy for the telegraph! The American villain lands 
in the arms of the Liverpool police. To arrest crime, to scatter good, to 
strike the key-note of musical accord, God has ordained the telegraph. 

PLEASANT WOBK FOR WOMEN. 

"I am glad that woman, shut out from so many other fields of employ- 
ment, has been admitted here. Telegraphy says to her: 'Come down out of 
that killing work, and put your hand on this cleanly, and intelligent, and 
healthful employment;' and woman is to-day refining all telegraphic circles. 
People are better behaved, have more elevated conversation, and brighter 
cheer where women are. Is not that so? If it is. not, why do we all love 
to get into the ladies' cabin of the Fulton Ferry? I thank God that woman, 
who has never had any chance, has been permitted to enter upon this ele- 
vated realm of telegraphy. 

MERCIES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 

"I celebrate the mercies of the telegraph. What meant those storm- 
signals at Barnegat, and Haltnas, and St. John, and Key West, yesterday? 
By some color or some shape indicating a storm from the North, or a storm 
from the South, or changeable currents? Why, it meant the telegraph is 
gathering up the reports of thermometers, and barometers, and wind vanes, 
all over the land. And as Elijah, the prophet, ran down Mount Carmel 
ahead of King Ahab's chariot, announcing the coming of the rain, so this 
scientific prophet ran ahead of the imperial storm — ran down Mount Wash- 
ington and the AUeghanies and up from the Caribbean Sea, crying: 'A tem- 
pest! Get ready on all the coasts; let the fishing-smacks stand off from the 
breakers; let not the steamers attempt harbor to-night; let all these vessels 
close reef maintopsail.' There are thousands of sailors sleeping amid the 
corals and sea-weed who this morning would have been alive had the storm- 
signals been lifted years before. Telegraph operators! they who go down 
to the sea in ships bless you. And in all the homes from which you have 



UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAN. 



221 



signalled back bereavement, in the morning and evening prayer before God, 
let mention be made of the mercies of telegraphy. 

/'What mean those rail-trains going up and down the great thorough- 
fares without accident, or with but few accidents — ^with less comparative 
loss of life than the old stage-coach — putting almost a quarter of a century 
between Norwalk and Ashtabula disasters? Telegraphs are watching 
around these chariots of fire, telling when they start — when they stop — all 
about them. MilHons of people traveling one way in perfect safety. 
REMEMBEOa THE OPEHATOR. 

"I charge you to seek divine solace in all your perplexities. To the 
outside world your work seems ambrosial. How easy to sit in a chair in a 
warm office and read, by the sound of the armature, or manipulate an instru- 
ment as easily as you would a piano! 'Here, at last, is an occupation with- 
out any annoyances Or trials.' Alas! since the day you began to learn the 
art, you have not been free from annoyances and trials. Send five thousand 
telegrams without the mistake of a word, and in the five thousand and first 
telegram make the slightest mistake, and what a rattling there is at the 
other end of the lines. The officers of the company are besieged with 
charges of your inefficiency. People prowl around wanting to get your 
position. You are put down on a smaller salary in a less conspicuous posi- 
tion, or you are turned out, and you sit amazed that such attenuated light- 
ning could make such loud thunder. Your nerves, your eyes, your heart 
sore with annoyance. So it is along the line of telegraphy, and in all depart- 
ments, from the uninformed lads who run with the lead-pencil and the 
receipt book, and the message, clean up to the room of the electrician, and 
the room of the treasurer, and vice-president, and the president. 

''Now let me say to the men and women engaged in this art. Do not 
make that art a mere matter of livelihood. Can it be that you have no 
Christian gratitude to God w^ho has allowed you to put your hand upon this 
mighty fulcrum which is to help to raise a sunken world toward a stooping 
heaven? I preach this sermon to magnify your office and to stir up in your 
soul an application of the grandeur of that work to which God has called 
you." 



CHAPTER XIII. 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 

WHAT A STUDY OF TALMAGE REVEALS HIS GREAT LOVE FOR NATURE IN ALL 

HER FORMS HUNTING FOR SECLUSION IN A COUNTRY HOME CRITICISM 

OF A RURAL VILLAGE POETRY OF THE WOODS, FIELDS AND MOUNTAINS. 

The first thing we discover when we begin the study of a man, to find out 
why he was great in Hterature, art, science, business or war, is that he was a 
deep and passionate lover. That is the secret of his success. That is the secret 
of all success. The man who has the nature of a lover and then concentrates 
his love on any one thing is almost sure to get that thing in abundance. He 
can hardly help it. Take the miser. In youth he was no doubt full of spirits, 
a strong youth, a pushing young man. He was destined to love something 
with all his nature. Circumstances made that thing gold. After that there 
was no question about his getting money. If a man have a dollar in his pocket 
and love money better than he loves anything else in the world he will not 
part with the coin. He will look upon the tempting viands when he is hungry, 
shake his head and go away feeling that they are not worth the cost. He 
will rather be cold than part with the smallest portion of his treasure. He 
loves money better than anything else in the world and will not change a piece 
of it for comfort or pleasure for that reason. It naturally follows that he gets 
money to the exclusion of everything else. 

It is the same way in art. The poet loves the chiming of sweet words in 
his soul better than he loves wealth, or power, wife and child, health or com- 
fort. He sings when he is starving ; he sees those who should be his care and 
pride suffering from cold and hunger and tries to rouse himself to answer to 
their needs. But the siren of song lures him from duty as the siren of gold 
lures the miser, the siren of ambition the politician, the siren of glory the 
soldier. All these men must be intrinsically great. They could not love one 
thing with such ardor were they less than that. They could not sacrifice 

222 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 223 



ever>^thing, even themselves, to gain and keep possession of something that 
others throw away or are ready to give in exchange for the thing they love. 

Drummond says that love is the greatest thing in the world. He meant 
it in the sense that it is an overruling spirit that takes possession of persons 
and makes them beautiful. That is looking at life from the standpoint of the 
Buddhist. But this love that moves individuals to act in one w^ay or another 
is really the character builder of the material world. Some men are blessed 
or cursed with a superabundance of this quality in their natures. If their 
choice fall on or be guided to a proper and worthy object in the beginning 
such natures are certain to be accounted great in the world. 

Talmage was a great lover. His heart was so big that it welcomed all 
things and made them at home there. He resembled Dickens in one respect. 
The oddities in individuals held a fascination for him. He loved to take a 
farmer, a commercial traveler, a sailor, a banker, an actor, some characteristic 
representative of trade, business or profession as the foundation for a dis- 
course and by a critical analysis of his peculiarities applied to his occupation 
illustrate his theme. In this way he introduced into his sermon a living per- 
sonality and gave to his preachment a human interest that could be secured in 
no other way. 

Had Talmage been less of a universal lover he would have failed in his 
attempt ^o preach a practical religion and at the same time keep well within 
the bountVj of hi>;. church creed. That he did succeed in this to a remarkable 
degree prov.^s the greatness of the man. How all phases of life appealed to 
his imaginatioii^ is illustrated in an article he contributed to Harper's Magazine 
for October, i86r He was then but thirty-five years old and had not devel- 
oped that epigran-i.natic literary style and exclamatory delivery that in the 
later years of his ministr}^ became such a pronounced feature of his utterance. 
From Woodside he writes: 

''On this the brightest week of the brightest month of all the year I sit down 
to write that which I hope may be pleasant to read when red-armed Autumn 
smites his anvil, and through all the woods the sparks are flying, and it needs 
not a prophetic eye to see the mountains from base to tip-top filled with 
horses and chariots of fire. Indeed, June and October, if they could see each 



224 LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 



other, would soon be married. Not much difference between their ages; the 
one fair and the other ruddy; both beautiful to look upon, and typical; the 
one holding a bunch of flowers, and the other a basket of fruit. The south 
winds would harp at the nuptials, and against the uplifted chalices would dash 
the blood of strawberry and grape. To that marriage altar January would 
bring its cups of crystal, and April its strung beads of shower, and July its 
golden crown of wheat." 

Here we see the poet-lover of nature reveling in the beauty of the seasons. 
But the practical side of the man immediately asserts itself. He turns from 
the delightful contemplation of the beauties of the country to describe the 
personal experiences of his journey thither. 

"While yet the March snows were on the ground we started out to purchase 
a place in the country. Had unaccountable experiences with land-agents, 
drove horses terrible for tardiness or speed, gazed on hills and flats, examined 
houses with roof pitched or horizontal, heard fabulous stories of Pennsyl- 
vania grass and New Jersey berries, until one day, the wind a hurricane, and 
the roads a slush, and the horse a-drip with rain from blinder to trace, we 
drove up in front of a cottage, the first glance at which assured us we had 
come to the fulfillment of our wishes." 

Now that he is among country people he cannot resist the temptation to 
delineate their characters and that close habit of observation which make all 
his sermons a panorama of events with living characters moving in them is 
shown in that early day. 

'Tn selecting a place to live," he writes, "the first requisite is seclusion. 
There is a profound satisfaction in not being looked at. After dwelling for 
considerable time in a large place you are apt to know a multitude. If on 
some Monday morning, starting down street, you feel decidedly frisky, you 
must nevertheless walk with as grave a step as though ascending a pulpit. If 
you acted out one-half the blitheness you feel a score of gentlemen and ladies 
would question your sanity. A country village affords no retreat. You can 
not raise half a dozen goslings without having them stoned for picking off 
your neighbor's gooseberries. Gossip wants no better heaven than a small 
village. Miss Glib stands at her gate three times a day talking with old Mrs. 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 225 



Chatterbox, and on rainy days at the blacksmith shop the whole business of 
the town swims in a tank of tobacco-juice of the worst plug. Everybody 
knows whether this morning out of the butcher's cart you bought mutton or 
calf's liver, and the mason's wife, at the risk of breaking her neck, rushes 
down stairs to exclaim, 'J^st think of it ! Mrs. Stuckup has bought a sirloin 
steak, and she is no better than other people!' Your brass kettle is always 
borrowed. A bandbox was seen going from the millinary shop to the house 
of a villager on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning a score of people 
are early at church, head half-turned toward the door, ready to watch the 
coming in of the new purchase, handkerchief up to mouth, ready to burst out 
at what they pronounce a perfect fright of a bonnet. They always ask what 
you gave for a thing, and say you were cheated; had something of a better 
quality they could have let you have for half the money. We have at different 
times lived in a small village, and many of our best friends dwell there, but 
we give as our opinion that there are other places more favorable for a man's 
getting to heaven. 

"Yes, our place must be secluded. Not roused at night by fire-engines, 
nor wakened in the morning by the rattle of milkman's wagon. Our milk- 
can shall come softly up in the shape of our clear-eyed, sleek-skinned, beautiful 
Devon. No chalk-settlings at the bottom of the milk, or unaccountable things 
floating on the top — honest milk, innocent of pump, foaming till it seems piled 
up above the rivets of the pail-handle. The air at noon untormented of jar 
and crash and jostle : only hen's cackle, and sheep's bleat, and cow's bellow, 
and the rattle of clevises as the plow wheels at the end of the furrow. No 
calling in of people just because they suppose it is expected, but the coming 
in of neighbors and friends because they really want to see you, their appetite 
so whetted with the breath of plowed ground that they are satisfied if you have 
nothing but ham for dinner. Such seclusion we have at Woodside. 

*Tt is never real morning except in the country. In the city in the early 
part of the day there is a mixed color that climbs down over the roofs oppo- 
site, and through the smoke of the chimney, that makes people think it is 
time to get up and comb their hair. But we have real morning in the country. 
Morning! descending 'from God out of heaven like a bride adorned for her 



226 LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 



husband/ A few moments ago I looked out, and the army of night-shadows 
were striking their tents. A red Hght on the horizon that does not make me 
think as it did Alexander Smith of "the barren beach of hell," but more like 
unto the fire kindled on the shore by Him whom the disciples saw at daybreak 
stirring the blaze on the beach of Genesareth. Just now the dew woke up in 
the hammock of the tree-branches and the light kissed it. Yonder, leaning 
against the sky, two great uprights of flame, crossed by many rundles of fire ! 
Some Jacob must have been dreaming. Through those burnished gates a 
flaming chariot rolls. Some Elijah must be ascending. Morning! I wish I 
had a rousing bell to wake the whole world up to see it. Every leaf a psalm. 
Every flower a censer. Every bird a chorister. Every sight beauty. Every 
sound music. Trees transfigured. The skies in conflagration. The air as if 
sweeping down from hanging-gardens of heaven. The foam of celestial seas 
plashed on the white tops of the spiraea. The honeysuckle on one side my 
porch challenges the sweet-brier on the other. The odors of heliotrope over- 
flow the urns and flood the garden. Syringas with bridal blossoms in their 
hair, and roses bleeding with a very carnage of color. Oh, the glories of 
day-dawn in the country! My pen trembles, and my eyes nioisten. Unlike 
the flaming sword that drove out the first pair from Eden, these fiery splendors 
seem like swords unsheathed by angel hands to drive us in. 

*'We always thought we would like to have a place near a woods. A few 
trees will not satisfy us. They feel lonely, and sigh, and complain about the 
house; but give me an untamed woods that with innumerable voices talk all 
night in their sleep, and when God passes in the chariot of the wind wave 
their plumes and shout, as multitudes in a king's procession. 

"Our first night at Woodside was gusty, and with the hymn of multitudi- 
nous spring leaves in our ears we dreamed all night of waves roaring and 
battalions tramping. Shrubs and bushes do not know much, and have but 
little to say, but old trees are grand company. Like Jotham's, they talk in 
parables from the top of Gerizim; have whole histories in their trunk; tell 
you of what happened when your father was a boy ; hold engravings on their 
leaves of divine etching, and every bursting bud is a Thanatopsis.' There 
are some trees that were never meant to be civilized. With great sweat and 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS, 227 



strain I dug up from the woods a small tree and set it in the door-yard ; but 
it has been in a huff ever since. I saw at the time that it did not like it. It 
never will feel at home among the dressed-up evergreens. It is difficult suc- 
cessfully to set hemlocks and kalmias and witch-hazel into the rhyme of a 
garden. They do better in the wild blank verse of the forest. * * * * 
Last evening we sped along the skirt of the wood. Our horse prefers to go 
fast, and we like to please him; and what with the odor of red clover tops, 
and the breath of the woods, we were happy enough. 

Doesn't this cheerful rhapsodizing on what is generally considered the 
drudgery of life give a happy glimpse of the man Talmage? To find so much 
of real enjoyment in digging with a back-breaking hoe about a hill of pota- 
toes, or turning up the sweet-smelling soil with a dull spade is glorious. It 
is a healthy as well as a poetical mind that discovers so much that is pleasing 
in every-day employments. It was this love of country life, and sympathy 
with the vocations of the hard-worked country people that made him such a 
welcome guest in the homes of the uncitified and caused his sermons to be 
watched for and read at the firesides of four million rural American homes. 

Amid such scenes he found that rest which is so grateful to the brain- 
worker after a season of close application to his books and pen. He revels 
in the thought that he is to remain among these scenes until the Autumn. He 
feels that his congregation which has allowed him this respite will reap the 
benefit of their generosity in stronger and more virile preaching when he shall 
again take up his labors in the Fall. And what he is enjoying he wishes for 
every other preacher. ''Congregations," he says, ''would be advantaged by 
it if for a few weeks of every year they would allow their pastors a little farm 
life. Three weeks at fashionable watering-places will not do the work. There 
is not enough salts and sulphur in all the springs to overcome the tight shoes 
and the uncomfortable gloves, and the late hours and the high living, and the 
dresses economical at the neck. Rather turn us out to physical work. A sharp 
hoe will hack to pieces all your dyspepsia. A pruning-knife will cut off the 
excrescences of your disposition. The dash of the shower that wets you to the 
skin will cool your spirit for ecclesiastical strife. Daily swinging of the axe 
will tone up your nerves. Trampling down the hay as it is tossed into the mow 



228 LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 



will tread into forgetfulness your little perplexities. In the wake of the plow 
you may pick up strength with which to battle public iniquity. Neighbors 
looking over the fence may think we are only weeding cantaloupes, or splitting 
rails, or husking corn, when we are rebuilding our strength, enkindling our 
spirits, quickening our brain, purifying our theology, and blessing our souls. 

THE PLACE OF rLOWEBS IN CHEATION-. 

"Here I stop. The aroma of the garden almost bewilders my senses. Flow- 
ers seem to me the dividing-line between the physical and the spiritual. The 
stamen of the honey-suckle is the alabaster pillar at which the terrestrial and 
the celestial part and meet. Out of the cup of the water-lily earth and heaven 
drink. May the blessing of larkspur and sweet-william fall upon all the 
dwellers in country and town ! Let there be some one to set a tuft of mignon- 
ette by every sick man's pillow, and plant a fuchsia in every working-man's 
yard, and place a geranium in every sewing-girl's window, and twine a cypress 
about every poor man's grave. And, above all, may there come upon us the 
blessing of Him whose breath is the redolence of flowers ! Between these leaves 
I press thee— Oh ! Tily of the Valley !' " 

TALMAGE THE GREAT LOVER. 

Here we have Talmage at his best. Not Talmage the preacher, nor Tal- 
mage the orator, nor Talmage the business man, but Talmage the great lover. 
He revels in the joy of embracing the whole landscape, rich with verdure 
and bloom, fragrant with the aroma of Nature at work in her laboratory of 
perfumes, and resplendent with the glory of unclouded sunshine. 

Whenever we catch Talmage off his guard, forgetting that he is a great 
general in the battle against evil, and expressing the undiluted joy of his soul 
in the love of Things, we cannot help but love him in return for his great 
outpouring of world-sympathy. It is the same if he is among the beautiful 
New Jersey hills, sailing along the classic Hudson, trampling the heather of 
historic Scotland, or standing reverently before the site of the holy temples 
of Jerusalem. When he was leaving this country for England on his first 
trip abroad he gives us his impressions of the grandeur of the sea : 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 229 



"We had built up all the stories of the sea-faring men into one tremendous 
imagining of the ocean. We went on board ready for typhoons and euro- 
clydons. We thought the sea a monster, with ships in its maw, and hurri- 
canes in its mane. In our ten days' voyage, we have seen it in various 
moods, but have been impressed with nothing so much as the smile of the sea. 
While we have not found the poetic 'cradle of the deep,' we have concluded 
that the sea is only a vigorous old nurse that jolts the child up and down on 
a hard knee, without much reference to how much it can endure. 

"We cannot forget the brightness of the morning in which we came down 
the bay, followed to Sandy Hook by five hundred friends, lashing us out to 
sea with waving pocket-handkerchiefs, and pelting us with their huzzas. The 
sun set, and the moon took the veil of a nun and went into the dark turrets 
of midnight cloud, and the stars dropped their flakes of light into the water, 
and melted into the blackness; but the sunlight of the cheery faces at the 
starting has shone on three thousand miles of water. So many friendly 
hands helped steady the ship, and the breath of so many voices filled the sails, 
which, by the help of the great screw, are bearing us onward." 

APPRECIATION OF LOVE. 

In an essay on Country Life and Rural Beauty, he tells how he observes 
and appreciates this virtue of love in others : 

" To one who has been long in city pent, 
'Tis sweet to look upon the fair 
And open face of heaven." 

"What a beautiful trait in the character of the English people is their 
hearty love of everything that savors and sounds of 'country !' It is a thor- 
oughly healthy characteristic — deep-rooted and not to be eradicated by the 
longest and most engrossing occupations of a city or town life. 

"Many a fainting heart is cheered by the hope that one day a success 
will crown the labors of years, and enable the industrious citizen to close his 
days amid the quiet of a green suburban retreat, or a country-house, far off 
among fields, hedge-rows, and babbling brooks, with the flowers blowing, and 



230 LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 



skylarks singing at will, freely and joyously. This is the dream of youth, 
the hope of manhood, and the realization of age in the case of many. 

"We do not wonder at the universality of this feeling among our country- 
men and countrywomen. This old green country is worthy of all their admi- 
ration, love, and pride. It is almost a part of themselves, and associations 
connected with it are bound up with their being. Our poets have sung it, till 
it has become mixed up with their tenderest and strongest influences. His- 
tory has made it venerable; its old castles, and abbeys, and churches — its 
battlefields — its old halls, and country houses, are they not identified in history 
with the march of this great people in civilization and freedom? 

"Then there are the birthplaces of its great men, the haunts of its poets, 
the stately piles dedicated to learning, the magnificent palaces of the nobles, 
the homes of the people, the huts of the poor, scattered all over this green 
land. There are the old forests, older than the Norman Conquest : and the old 
streams and mountains, older than all. 

FEJISHNESS AND JOY OF THE COUNTRY. 

"Country ! The very word has music in it ; it brings up thoughts of the 
erry maypole, the freshness of the woods and fields, pansies and spring 
violets, shady lanes, and rose-embowered lattices; the hum of bees, and the 
music of birds, the bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle at eventide, 
clear skies from which the sun shines down among green leaves, and upon 
grassland, mossy banks, and gurgling* rills, while trout and minnow 

" Taste the luxury of glowing beams 
Tempered with coolness.' 

"Country, however, we cannot all have ; we who live in towns and cities^ — 
the great accumulated deposits of civilization — must ply away at our several 
tasks, some with the hammer, and others with the quill; shopmen at their 
counters; lawyers in their chambers; needlewomen in their attics; merchants 
in their counting-houses; laborers at their daily work. But even here there 
are beauties and simple pleasures if we look for them. 

"Let us, then, look at the bright, at the happy side of things ; and we shall 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS, 231 



thus have delight in struggling onward ourselves, and in helping others to 
do likewise. Encourage the habit of being happy, for habit assuredly it is. 
Thus will adversity be made more hopeful, and prosperity more joyous. Let 
not the mind give way to gloomy thoughts, but be cheerful. Scarcely is there 
a subject that does not afford room for agreeable meditation. There is no 
human being so humble as not to be an object of human interest. There is 
no object in nature so mean as not to afford matter for instructive thought; 
and he who cannot extract benefit from such contemplations is certainly not 
in any respect to be envied. Wordsworth says : 

" 'He who feels contempt 

For any living thing, hath faculties 
Which he has never used.' 

" "There is pleasure to be gathered from things in themselves apparently 
the most trivial. It is the sunshine of the heart that gives brightness, beauty, 
and meaning to them; it falls upon coldness, and warms it; upon suffering, 
and comforts it; upon ignorance, and enlightens it; upon sorrow, and cheers 
it. Without it, flowers bloom in vain, and all creation is but one dreary, 
lifeless, soulless blank. 

LOOK FOR THE BIMGHT SIDE. 

"Jeremy Bentham says, 'Look out for the brightest side of things ; let all 
ideas be made to spring up in the realms of pleasure, as far as the will can 
act upon the production. A large part of existence is necessarily passed in 
inaction. By day (to take an instance from the thousands in constant recur- 
rence), when in attendance on others, and the time is lost by being kept wait- 
ing; by night, when sleep is unwilling to close the eyelids — the economy of 
happiness recommends the occupations of pleasurable thought. In walking 
abroad, or in resting at home, the mind cannot be vacant; its thoughts may 
be useful, useless, or pernicious to happiness. Direct them aright; the habit 
of happy thought will spring up like any other habit.' 

"This is sound, practical sense — moreover, excellent philosophy; and it 
affords valuable hints to those who would extract a rational enjoyment from 



232 LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS, 



existence. If suffering is to be borne — as it must — at least let us learn how 
it is best to be met, and how the struggling heart is to be comforted and sup- 
ported in the midst of its trials. But let us not imitate those minds which, 
like flies, are ever settling upon sores. We^must endeavor to know much, 
and to love much ; for the more one knows and loves, the more one lives, feels, 
and enjoys. Cherish the habit of cheerfulness above all things; it will serve 
alike for prosperity and adversity, and there will always be, at least, a gleam 
of sunshine. 

LOVE m THE MARKET PLACE. 

• 

"Go to Washington Market any morning in June, and you will there find 
the general love of flowers and green leaves displaying itself in another form. 
The stalls are filled with endless loads of bouquets the tables are gayly set 
out with their tempting array of calceolarias, geraniums, fuchsias, cactuses, 
roses and heliotrope, all nicely potted and mossed; and few there are who 
can resist the pleasure of having one or more of these in possession, and bear- 
ing them off in triumph. Many a longing look is cast upon these stalls by 
those too poor to buy. 

"What would many a poor girl give to be the owner of one of those sweet 
plants, reminding them, as they do, of country, and gardens, and sunshine, 
and the fresh beauty of nature? 

"The love of flowers is beautiful in the young, beautiful in the aged. It 
bespeaks simplicity, purity, delicate taste, and an innate love of nature. 

"And long may flowers bloom in the homes of our people — in their parlor 
windows, in their one-roomed cottages, in their attics, in their cellar dwellings 
even. We have hope for the hearts that love flowers, and the country of 
which they are born. 

"See, perched in that window-sill, high above the rushing tide of city life, 
a lark in its narrow cage. Its eyes upturned, and its feet planted on the bit of 
green turf, which its owner brought from under a great oak tree in the forest, 
when on his last holiday ramble; it pours through its little throat a flood of 
melody and joy. Though confined, yet it sees the sun through its prison bars, 
looks up cheerfully and sings ! And its captive owner in that narrow room 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF. GREATNESS. 



233 



behind — captive by the necessity of laboring for his daily bread — ^he, too, as 
he hears the glad melody, and as his eyes glance at the bit of green turf, and 
then at the blue sky above, feels joy and love 'shed abroad in his heart,' and 
he labors on more hopefully, even though the carol of the lark has brought 
his childhood's home, the verdure of its fields, and the music of its words, 
gushing into his memory. 

''Sing on, then, bird of heaven! 

LOVE THE SPIBIT OF HOLIBAYS. 

"You see the lOve cd country strongly display itself on all the holidays in 
the year. Then you find crowds of men, women, and children, pressing and 
panting out of the towns and cities in all directions, toward the fields and 
the fresh air. 

"Steamers up and steamers down, stage coaches, 'busses,' and cabs; and, 
above all, railway trains, are, on such days, packed tight with passengers, all 
bound for the 'country,' for a day on the hills, in the woods, or by the rivers — 
a long day of fresh breathing and pure delight. 

"We might say a great deal more of the thousand other forms in which 
this love of country exhibits itself among us — of the cottage gardening, the 
taste for which is rapidly extending among the people — the small allotments 
so eagerly desired by workingmen; the amateur gentleman farming; of the 
love of rural sports, and games, and exercise ; of our national literature, which 
is so full of the free breath of the country, of our poetry and song, which from 
Shakespeare to Wordsworth has always drawn its finest imagery from nature, 
and has never struck the chords of the national heart with more electric power 
than when appealing to country life and rural beauty." 

FAMILIARITT WITH BIRDS. 

Nothing in nature seems to have escaped the notice of this great universal 
lover. In a sermon entitled Migration Heavenward he shows what a delicate 
appreciation he has of all the families of birds, from the wren to the eagle. 
He found an appropriate text for this beautiful sermon in Jeremiah viii:/. 

"The stork in heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and 



234 LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS, 

the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people 
know not the judgment of the Lord." 

''When God would set fast a beautiful thought, He plants it in a tree. 
When He would put it afloat, He fashions it into a fish. When He would 
have it glide the air, He moulds it into a bird. My text speaks of four birds 
of beautiful instinct — the stork, of such strong affection that it is allowed 
familiarly to come, in Holland and Germany, and build its nest over the 
door-way; the sweet-dispositioned turtle-dove, mingling in color white, and 
black, and brown, and ashen, and chestnut; the crane, with a voice like the 
clang of a trumpet; the swallow, swift as a dart shot out of the bow of heaven, 
falling, mounting, skimming, sailing — four birds started by the prophet 
twenty-five centuries ago, yet flying on through the ages, with rousing truth 
under glossy wing and in the clutch of stout claw. I suppose it may have 
been this very season of the year^ — autumn — and the prophet out-of-doors, 
thinking of the impenitence of the people of his day, hears a great cry over- 
head. 

''Now, you know it is no easy thing for one with ordinary delicacy of eye- 
sight to look into the deep blue of the noonday heaven; but the prophet 
looks up, and there are flocks of storks, and turtle-doves, and cranes, and 
swallows, drawn out in long lines for flight southward. As is their habit, the 
cranes had arranged themselves into two lines making an angle, a wedge 
splitting the air with wild velocity, the old crane, with commanding call 
bidding them onward; while the towns, and the cities, and the continents 
slid under them. The prophet, almost blinded from looking into the daz- 
zling heavens, stoops down and begins to think how much superior the birds 
are in sagacity about their safety than men about theirs; and he puts his 
hand upon the pen, and begins to write: 'The stork in the heaven knoweth 
her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe 
the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the 

Lord.' * 

CONVENTION OF SONGSTEBS. 

"If you were in the field to-day, in the clump of trees at the corner of 
the field, you would see a convention of birds, noisy as the American Con- 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 



235 



gress the last night before adjournment, or as the English Parliament when 
some unfortunate member proposes more economy in the Queen's house- 
hold — a convention of birds all talking at once, moving and passing resolu- 
tions on the subject of migration; some proposing to go to-morrow, some 
moving that they go to-day, some moving that they go to Brazil, some to 
Florida, some to the table-lands of Mexico, but all unanimous in the fact 
that they must go soon, for they have marching orders from the Lord, 
written on the first white sheet of the frost, and in the pictorial of the chang- 
ing leaves. There is not a belted kingfisher, or a chafifinch, or a fire-crested 
wren, or a plover, or a red-legged partridge but expects to spend the winter 
at the South, for the apartments have already been ordered for them in 
South America, or in Africa ; and after thousands of miles of flight, they will 
stop in the very tree where they spent last January. Farewell, bright plum- 
age! Until spring weather, away! Fly on, great band of heavenly musi- 
cians! Strew the continents with music, and whether from Northern fields, 
or Carolinian swamps, or Brazilian groves men see your wings, or hear your 
voice, may they bethink themselves of the solemn words of the text: The 
stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the 
crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people 
know not the judgment of the Lord.' 

BIRDS MORE SAGACIOUS THAN MEN". 

"I propose, so far as God may help me, this morning, carrying out the 
idea of the text, to show that the birds of the air have more sagacity than 
men. And I begin by particularizing and saying that they mingle music 
with their work. The most serious undertaking of a bird's life is this annual 
travel from the Hudson to the Amazon, from the Thames to the Nile. Nat- 
uraHsts tell us that they arrive there thin, and weary, and plumage ruffled, 
and yet they go singing all the way; the ground, the lower line of the music, 
the sky, the upper line of the music, themselves, the notes scattered up and 
down between. I suppose their song gives elasticity to their wing, and 
helps on with' the journey, dwindling a thousand miles into four hundred. 
Would God that we were as wise as they in mingling Christian song with our 



236 LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS, 



every-day work! I believe there is such a thing as taking the pitch of 
Christian devotion in the morning, and keeping it all the day. I think we 
might take some of the dullest, heaviest, most disagreeable work of our life, 
and set it to the tune of 'Antioch' or 'Mount Pisgah/ 

"It is a good sign when you hear a workman whistle. It is a better sign 
when you hear him hum a roundelay. It is a still better sign when you hear 
him sing the words of Isaac Watts or Charles Wesley. A violin chorded 
and strung, if something accidentally strike it, makes music, and I suppose 
there is such a thing as having our hearts so attuned by divine grace, that 
even the rough collisions of life will make a heavenly vibration. * * * 
The birds of the air are wiser than we, in the fact that, in their migration, 
they Hy very high. During the summer, when they are in the fields, they 
often come within reach of the gun; but when they start for the annual 
flight southward, they take their places mid-heaven, and go straight as a 
mark. The longest rifle that was ever brought to shoulder can not reach 
them. Would to God that we were as wise as the stork and crane in our 
flight heavenward! The stork and crane have found above the Alps plenty 
of room for free flying. We go out and we conquer our temptations by 
the grace of God, and lie down. On the morrow, those temptations rally 
themselves and attack us, and by the grace of God we defeat them again; 
but, staying all the time in the old encampment, we have the same old 
battles to fight over. Why not whip out our temptations, and then forward 
march, making one raid through the enemy's country, stopping not until 
we break ranks after the last victory. Do, my brethren, let us have some 
novelty of combat, at any rate, by changing, by going on, by making ad- 
vancement, trading off our stale prayers about sins we ought to have quit 
long ago, going on toward a higher state of Christian character, and rout- 
ing out sins that we have never thought of yet. The fact is, if the Church 
of God — if we, as individuals, made rapid advancement in the Christian 
life, these stereotyped prayers we have been making for ten or fifteen years 
would be as inappropriate to us as the shoes, and the hats, and the coats we 
wore ten or fifteen years ago. Oh for a higher fight in the Christian life, 
the stork and the crane in their migration teaching us the lesson! 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS, 237 



'Dear Lord, and shall we ever live, 

At this poor dying rate — 
Our love so faint, so cold to Thee, 

And Thine to us so great?' 

wisbom: of the birds. 

"Again, I remark that the birds of the air are wiser than we, because they 
know when to start. If you should go out now and shout, 'Stop, storks 
and cranes, don't be in a hurry!' they would say, 'No, we can not stop; last 
night we heard the roaring in the woods bidding us away, and the shrill 
flute of the north wind has sounded the retreat. We must go. We must 
go.' So they gather themselves into companies, and turning not aside for 
storm or mountain top or shock of musketry, over land and sea, straight as 
an arrow to the mark they go. And if you come out this morning with a 
sack of corn and throw it in the fields and try to get them to stop, they are 
so far up they would hardly see it. They are on their way south. You could 
not stop them. Oh that we were as wise about the best time to start for 
God and heaven! We say, 'Wait until it is a Httle later in the season of 
mercy. Wait until some of these green leaves of hope are all dried up and 
have been scattered. Wait until next year.' After a while we start, and it is 
too late, and we perish in the way when God's wrath is kindled but a little. 
There are, you know, exceptional cases where birds have started too late, 
and in the morning you have found them dead on the snow. And there are 
those who have perished half-way between the world and Christ. They 
waited until the last sickness, when the mind was gone, or they were on 
the express train going at forty miles an hour, and they came to the bridge 
and the 'draw was up' and they went down. How long to repent and pray? 
Two seconds! Two seconds! To do the work of a lifetime and to prepare 
for the vast eternity in two seconds! I was reading of an entertainment 
given in a king's court, and there were musicians there, with elaborate pieces 
of music. After a while Mozart came and began to play, and he had a 
blank piece of paper before him, and the king familiarly looked over his 
shoulder and said, 'What are you playing? I see no music before you.' 
And Mozart put his hand on his brow, as much as to say, 1 am impro- 



238 LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 



vising. It was very well for him, but oh, my friends, we can not extem- 
porize heaven. If we do not get prepared in this world, we will never take 
part in the orchestral harmonies of the saved. If we go out of this world 
unpardoned, we secure for our souls a blasted residence. Oh that we were 
as wise as the crane and the stork, flying away, flying away from the tempest! 

THE PINCHTNG FROST OF SIN. 

"Some of you have felt the pinching frost of sin. You feel it to-day. 
You are not happy. I look into your faces and I know you are 
not happy. There are voices within your soul that will not be 
silenced, telling you that you are sinners, and that without the pardon of 
God you are undone forever. What are you going to do, my friends, with 
the accumulated transgressions of this lifetime? Will you stand still and let 
the avalanche tumble over you? Oh that you would go away into the warm 
heart of God's mercy. The Southern grove, redolent with magnolia and 
cactus, never waited for Northern flocks as God has waited for you, saying, 
*I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Come unto me, all ye who are 
weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' 

"Another frost is bidding you away — it is the frost of sorrow. Where do 
you live now? 'Oh,' you say, 'I have moved.' Why did you move? You 
say, T don't want as large a house now as formerly.' Why do you not want 
as large a house? You say, 'My family is not so large.' Where have they 
gone to? Eternity! Your mind goes back through that last sickness and 
through the almost supernatural effort to keep life, and through those 
prayers that seemed unavailing, and through that kiss which received no 
response because the lips were lifeless, and I hear the bells tolling and I hear 
the hearts breaking — while I speak, I hear them break. A heart! Another 
heart! Alone! alone! alone! This world, which in your girlhood and boy- 
hood was sunshine, is cold now, and oh! weary dove, you fly around this 
world as though you would like to stay, when the wind and the frost and 
the blackening clouds would bid you away into the heart of an all-comforting 
God. Oh, I have noticed again and again what a botch this world makes of 
it when it tries to comfort a soul in trouble! It says, 'Don't cry!' How 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 239 

can we help crying when the heart's treasures are scattered, and father is 
gone, and mother is gone, and companions are gone, and the child is gone, 
and everything seems gone? It is no comfort to tell a man not to cry. 
The world comes up and says, 'Oh, it is only the body of your loved one 
that you have put in the ground!' But there is no comfort in that. That 
body is precious. Shall we never put our hand in that hand again, and 
shall we never see that sweet face again? Away with your heartlessness, 
oh world! But come, Jesus! and tell us that when the tears fall they fall 
into God's bottle; that the dear bodies of our loved ones shall rise radiant in 
the resurrection; and all the breakings down here shall be liftings up there, 
and 'they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the 
sun light on them nor any heat, for the Lamb which is in the midst of the 
throne shall lead them to living fountains of water, and God shall wipe all 
tears from their eyes.' 

EXHORTATIONS OF THE BIBBS. 

"You may have noticed that when the chaffinch or the stork or the crane 
starts on its migration, it calls all those of its kind to come too. The tree- 
tops, are full of chirp and whistle and carol and the long roll-call. The bird 
does not start ofif alone. It gathers all of its kind. Oh that you might be 
as wise in this migration to heaven,, and that you might gather all your fam- 
ilies and your friends with you! I would that Hannah might take Samuel 
by the hand, and Abraham might take Isaac, and Hagar might take Ishmael. 
I ask you if those who sat at your breakfast-table this morning will sit with 
you in heaven? I ask you what influences you are trying to bring upon 
them, what example you are setting them? Are you calling them to go with 
you? Ay, Ay, have you started yourself? I say it in all love. I could not 
stand here in any other spirit and say this. 

"Start for heaven yourself, and take your children with you. Come 
thou and all thy house into the ark. Tell your little ones that there are 
realms of balm and sweetness for all those who fly in the right direction. 
Heaven beckons from above; hell gapes from beneath; and this is the only 
safe hour. Oh, make the best of it. Swifter than eagle's stroke, put out for 



240 LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS, 



heaven. Like the crane or the stork, stop not night nor day until you find 
the right place for stopping. Seated to-day in Christian service, will you be 
seated in the same glorious service when the heavens have passed away with 
a great noise, and the elements have melted with fervent heat, and the re- 
deemed are gathered around the throne of Jesus? Oh, is it impossible that 
the separating line goes through any family in my beloved flock? Is the 
father on one side and the mother on the other side of the line that divides 
the two eternities? If you are saved, take your friends with you. Invite all 
your children to go along. Together on earth, may you be together in 
heaven !" 

HOW TALMAGB USED HIS FAULTS. 

These are only a few of the many examples of the living love for all 
things that burned in the heart of Talmage. He had faults, great glaring 
human faults, but even these he made serviceable in his endeavor to help 
every other human being to be happy. His egotism was great, but his love 
for man was greater; his eccentricities were pronounced, but his love for all 
created things overshadowed his wildest gestures and most startling utter- 
ances. If he had a keen appreciation of the money value of his sermons and 
lectures he put into those sermons and lectures only such things as he be- 
lieved would be helpful to every one who heard or read them, and then saw 
that they were printed or delivered where thousands upon thousands should 
get the benefit of his thoughts and studies. If he used sensational means to 
attract attention to himself he riveted that attention, not on himself, but 
on the gospel of Jesus Christ. He preached to no individual or class, but 
to all men and all classes. He believed absolutely in a heaven of happiness 
for the righteous and longed to see every human being hurrying toward the 
precious gateway. He believed in a hell of eternal agony and strove to pic- 
ture it in such colors that all would make strenuous efforts to avoid it. All 
these things he did, as we may believe from a careful study of his works, 
because he loved greatly. And measuring the love of the infinite by that 
of the finite, he beheld a vision of such radiance that he was forever striving 
to open the hearts of his hearers that into them might stream the warmth 
and glory and comfort that shone continually into his own. 



LOVE THE MOTOR POWER OF GREATNESS. 241 



"I saw in Kensington Garden, London," he cries, "a picture of Waterloo 
a good while after the battle had passed, and the grass had grown all over 
the field. There was a dismounted cannon, and a lamb had come up from 
the pasture and lay sleeping in the mouth of that cannon. So the artist 
had represented it — a most suggestive thing. Then I thought how the war 
between God and the soul had ended; and instead of the announcement, 
'The wages of sin is death,' there came the words, 'My peace I 'give unto 
thee;* and amidst the batteries of the law that had once quaked with the 
fiery hail of death, I beheld the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of 
the world." 



CHAPTER XIV, 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 

HUMOR NECESSARY TO EMINENCE IN LITERATURE — CHAUCER AND SHAKE- 
SPEARE MODELS OF THE BROOKLYN DIVINE — HIS FINE SENSE OF THE 

RIDICULOUS PATHOS OFTEN SAVED HIM FROM RIDICULE — SOME OF HIS 

CHARACTERISTIC STORIES — HIS QUAINT DRAWING OF THE SEXTON. 

Humor is the sunshine of Hterature, as tragedy is its clouds and storms. 
When the two are gently mingled like the weather of an April day we have 
pathos: sunshine and cloud alternating, smiles and tears following one 
another in quick succession, the delightful drama of life as it is lived by most 
of us. The writer or speaker who can best shade his narrative or his ora- 
tion to this variety of changing emotions will interest the greatest number 
of auditors, touch the most hearts, win the widest publicity. Art is the 
power to reproduce life as it really is. There have been innumerable stu- 
dents of the fine arts who had great talents, were richly endowed with the 
imaginative faculty, had achieved great felicity of expression, had stores 
of learning, and who moreover work unceasingly to utter great truths, who 
failed at last to make an impression on their own time or to live after it 
because they lacked the softening power of humor. Wit is a barbed shaft 
;that attracts attention to itself by the wounds it makes in the listener's 
heart. Humor falls upon the conscience "Like the gentle dew from heaven, 
blessing him that gives and him that takes." We may admire the wit, we 
love the humorist. 

CHATTCEB. AND SHAKESFEABE. 

Chaucer was the first writer of English to recognize the power of that 
natural humor that bubbles up in the minds of country people who have 
not the advantages of polite society and are thus thrown back on their own 
originality for an expression of pleasantries. These homely attempts of 

242 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



243 



rustics are not always calculated to please refined ears, but they are always 
genuine in their feeling, and find their figures for illustration, their similes 
and their application in the lives of their friends and neighbors. Chaucer 
threw together the exquisite of the court and the blacksmith of the country 
town and allowed each to recite his thought in his own manner. In this 
way he got sudden contrasts that highly accentuated the humor of the 
situation and at the same time presented the character of the time and the 
personality of the inhabitants of early Britain for the pleasing study of 
future writers. 

Shakespeare, with all his mighty sweep of tragic force and unsounded 
seas of wisdom, was yet a gentle humorist. His plays abound with ex- 
amples of his genial spirit at play with the foibles of the people of his time. 
His clowns are knowing, but never bitter. They serve to "point a moral 
or adorn a tale" but with a mellow manner that is often as near tears as 
laughter. The year was none too full and round for Shakespeare's purposes, 
but he loved the April weather best and returned oftenest to the sunshine 
with fleeting clouds and gentle showers. If the storms of human passion 
sw^ept the stage as Boreas sweeps the land in some fierce winter storm, 
there was sure to follow a soothing southwind with the suggestion of the 
perfume of violets in its breath. He had a -flower for every grief, a sympathy 
so broad and deep that he brought balm to strew upon the grave of every 
ambition overthrown, every love blighted, every hope crushed. 

TALMAGEAN HUMOR. 

Talmage knew the power of humor, and was such a warm lover of the 
human race that pathos sprang up in his orations like daisies in a storm. 
He painted his pictures with a big brush and many of them were lurid with 
the flames of his zeal for the church and his hatred of the personal devil 
that he seems to have believed in to the end of his days. But after one of 
these outbursts of rhetoric wherein he had painted the agonies of the drunk- 
ard, the horrors of the murderer, he would suddenly stop, and with modu- 
lated voice filled with tender emotion he would recount some pathetic story 
that had happened in the life of some one whom he had known. So good 



244 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



a story-teller was he that the audience that he had but a moment before 
thrown into a state of fright or horror with his gruesome pictures melted 
to tears under the spell of his pathos. Like Lincoln, the Brooklyn divine 
had a story to illustrate every point in an argument. He had not the quaint 
humor of the Greatest American, but he had a rare appreciation of the odd 
in character and easily found the flaw in the armor of Pride, Selfishness, 
Vanity and all the tribe of false cavaliers in the lists of life, and having found 
it he thrust his spear of good-natured satire into the opening to the over- 
throw of his antagonist. 

Talmage was a humorist of a fine type. He made people laugh with 
him, not at him. The play of his mind on the oddities of character is best 
seen in his autobiographical writings, such as Around the Tea Table, but 
none of his sermons is without an occasional flash of humor, or a bit of 
genial character painting. His delineation of the sexton is a good example 
of his writing in this vein. "It requires more talent in some respects to be 
a sexton than to be a king," he says. "A church, in order to have peace and 
success, needs the right kind of a man at the prow and the right kind at the 
stern — that is, a good minister and a good sexton." 

THE ITDGETY SEXTON. 

The good doctor declared, so far as he knew, that there were four kinds 
of janitors. The fidgety sexton first claims his attention. He has evidently 
sufl^ered from the nervous nature of this man. "He is never still. His being 
in any one place proves to him' that he ought to be in some other. In the 
most intense part of the service, every ear alert to the truth, the minister at 
the very climax of his subject the fidgety official starts up the aisle. The 
whole congregation instantly turn from the consideration of judgment and 
eternity to see what the sexton wants. The minister looks, the elders look, 
the people in the gallery get up to look. It is left m universal doubt as to 
why the sexton frisked about at just that moment. He must have seen a 
fly on the opposite side of the church wall that needed to be driven off 
before it spoiled the fresco, or he may have suspicion that a rat-terrier is in 
one of the pews by the pulpit, from the fact that he saw two or three children 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



245 



laughing. Now, there is nothing more perplexing than a dog-chase during 
religious service. At a prayer-meeting once in my house/a snarling poodle 
came in, looked around, and then went and sat under the chair of its owner. 
We had no objection to its being there (dogs should not be shut out from 
all advantages), but the intruder would not keep quiet. A brother of 
dolorous whine was engaged in prayer, when poodle evidently thought 
that the time for response had come, and gave a loud yawn that had no 
tendency to solemnize the occasion. I resolved to endure it no longer. I 
started to extirpate the nuisance. I made a fearful pass of my hand in 
the direction of the dog, but missed him. A lady arose to give me a better 
chance at the vile pup, but I discovered that he had changed position. I 
felt by that time obstinately determined to eject him. He had got under 
a rocking-chair, at a point beyond our reach, unless we got on our knees; 
and it being a prayer-meeting, we felt no inappropriateness in taking that 
position. Of course the exercises had meanwhile been suspended, and the 

4 

eyes of all were upon my undertaking. The elders wished me all success 
in this police duty, but the mischievous lads by the door were hoping for 
my failure. Knowing this, I resolved that if the exercises were never re- 
sumed, I would consummate the work and eject the disturber. While in 
this mood I gave a lunge for the dog, not looking to my feet, and fell, over 
a rocker; but there were sympathetic hands to help me up, and I kept on 
until by the back of the neck I grasped the grizzly-headed pup, as he com- 
menced kicking, scratching, barking, yelping, howling, and carried him to 
the door in triumph, and without any care as to where he landed hurled him 
out into the darkness. 

'*Give my love to the sexton, and tell him never to chase a dog in religious 
service. Better let it alone, though it should, like my friend's poll-parrot, 
during prayer-time, break out with the song, *I would not live alway!' 
But the fidgety sexton is ever on the chase; his boots are apt to be noisy 
and say as he goes up the aisle, ^Creakety-crack! Here I come. Creakety- 
crack!' Why should he come in to call the doctor out of his pew when the 
case is not urgent? Cannot the patient wait twenty minutes, or is this the 
cheap way the doctor has of advertising? Dr. Camomile had but three 



246 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



cases in three months, and, strange coincidence, they all came to him at half- 
past eleven o'clock Sunday morning, while he was in church. If windows 
are to be lowered, or blinds closed, or register to be shut off, let it be before 
the sermon. 

THE LAZY SEXTON". 

"He does not lead the stranger to the pew, but goes a little way on the 
aisle, and points, saying, 'Out yonder!' You leave the photograph of 
your back in the dust of the seat you occupy; the air is in an atmospheric 
hash of what was left over last Sunday. Lack of oxygen will dull the best 
sermon, and clip the wings of gladdest song, and stupefy an audience. 
People go out from the poisoned air of our churches to die of pneumonia. 
What a sin, when there is so much fresh air, to let people perish for lack of 
it! The churches are the worst ventilated buildings on the continent. No 
amount of grace can make stale air sacred. 'Tlie prince of the power of 
the air' wants nothing but poisoned air for the churches. After audiences 
have assembled, and their cheeks are flushed, and their respiration has become 
painful, it is too late to change it. Open a window or door now, and you 
ventilate only the top of that man's bald head, and the back of the neck of 
that delicate woman, and you send off hundreds of people coughing and 
sneezing. One reason why the Sabbaths are so wide apart is that every 
church building may have six days of atmospheric purification. The best 
man's breath once ejected is not worth keeping. Our congregations are 
dying of asphyxia. In the name of all the best interests of the church, I 
indict one-half the sextons. 

THE GOOD SEXTOIT. 

"He is the minister's blessing, the church's joy, a harbinger of the millen- 
nium. People come to church to have him help them up the aisle. He 
wears slippers. He stands or sits at the end of the church during an impres- 
sive discourse, and feels that, though he did not furnish the ideas, he at least 
furnished the wind necessary in preaching it. He has a quick nostril to 
detect unconsecrated odors and puts the man who eats garlic on the back 
seat in the comer. He does not regulate the heat by a broken thermom- 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 247 



eter, minus the mercury. He has the window-blinds arranged just right — 
the hght not too glaring so as to show the freckles, not too dark so as to 
cast a gloom, but a subdued light that makes the plainest face attractive. 
He rings the bell merrily for Christmas festival, and tolls it sadly for the 
departed. He has real pity for the bereaved in whose house he goes for 
the purpose of burying their dead — not giving by cold, professional manner 
the impression that his sympathy for the troubled is overpowered by the 
joy that he has in selling another coffin. He forgets not his own soul; and 
though his place is to stand at the door of the ark, it is surely inside of it. 
After a while, a Sabbath comes when everything is wrong in church; the 
air is impure, the furnaces fail in their work, and the eyes of the people 
are blinded with an unpleasant glare. Everybody asks, 'Where is our old 
sexton?' Alas! he will never come again. He has gone to join Obed- 
edom and Berechiah, the doorkeepers of the ancient ark. He will never 
again take the dusting-whisk from the closet under the church stairs, for it 
is now with him 'Dust to dust.' The bell he so often rang takes up its 
saddest tolling for him who used to pull it, and the minister goes into his 
disordered and unswept pulpit, and finds the Bible upside down as he takes 
it up to read his text in Psalms, 84th chapter and loth verse: 1 had rather 
be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of 
wickedness !' 

THE MASSACRE OF CHURCH MUSIC. 

"There has been an effort made for the last twenty years to kill congre- 
gational singing. The attempt has been tolerably successful; but it means 
to me that some rules might be given by which the work could be done more 
quickly and completely. What is the use of having it lingering on in this 
uncertain way? Why not put it out of its misery? If you are going to kill 
a snake, kill it thoroughly, and do not let it keep on wagging its tail till sun- 
down. Congregational singing is a nuisance, anyhow, to many of the people. 
It interferes with their comfort. It offends their taste. It disposes their noses 
to flexibility in the upward direction. It is too democratic in its tendency. 
Down with congregational singing, and let us have no more of it. 



248 HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



"The first rule for killing it is to have only such tunes as the people can- 
not sing! In some churches it is the custom for choirs at each service to 
sing one tune which the people know. It is very generous of the choir to 
do that. The people ought to be very thankful for the donation. They do 
not deserve it. They are all 'miserable offenders' (I heard them say so), 
and, if permitted once in a service to sing, ought to think themselves highly 
favored. But I oppose this singing of even the one tune that the people 
understand. It spoils them. It gets them hankering after more. Total 
abstinence is the only safety; for if you allow them to imbibe at all, they will 
after a while get in the habit of drinking too much of it, and the first thing 
you know they will be going around drunk on sacred psalmody. 

"Besides that, if you let them sing one tune at a service, they will be 
putting their oar into the other tunes and bothering the choir. There is 
nothing more annoying to the choir than, at some moment when they have 
drawn out a note to exquisite fineness, thin as a split hair, to have some blun- 
dering elder to come in with a Traise ye the Lord!' Total abstinence, I 
say! Let all the churches take the pledge even against the milder musical 
beverages ; for they who tamper with champagne cider soon get to Hock and 
old Burgundy. 

» 

TTTNES THAT FITTED THE FATHEBS. 

"Now, if all the tunes are new, there will be no temptation to the people. 
They will not keep humming along, hoping they will find some bars down 
where they can break into the clover pasture. They will take the tune as 
an inextricable conundrum, and give it up. Besides that, Pisgah, Ortonville 
and Brattle Street are old fashioned. They did very well in their day. Our 
fathers were simple-minded people, and the tunes fitted them. But our 
fathers are gone, and they ought to have taken their baggage with them. 
It is a nuisance to have those old tunes floating around the church, and some 
time, just as we have got the music as fine as an opera, to have a revival of 
religion come, and some new-born soul break out in 'Rock of Ages, Cleft 
for me!' till the organist stamps the pedal with indignation, and the leader 
of the tune gets red in the face and swears. Certainly anything that makes 



HUMOR 'AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



249 



a man swear is wrong — ergo, congregational singing is wrong. Quod erat 
demonstrandum; which, being translated means Plain as the nose on a man's 
face. 

''What right have people to sing who know nothing about rhythmics, 
melodies, dynamics ? The old tunes ought to be ashamed of themselves when 
compared with our modern beauties. Let Dundee, and Portuguese Hymn, 
and Silver Street hide their heads beside what we heard not long ago in a 
church — just where I shall not tell. The minister read the hymn beautifully. 
The organ began, and the choir sang, as near as I could understand, as 
follows: 

Oo — aw — gQe — bah ^ 
Ah — me — la — he 
O — Pah — sah — dah 
Wo — Haw — gee-e-e-e. 

BEAUTIFUL SENTIMEOT. 

"My wife, seated beside me, did not like the music. But I said : 'What 
beautiful sentiment. My dear, it is a pastoral. You might have known 
that from 'Wo-haw-gee !' You have had your taste ruined by attending 
the Brooklyn Tabernacle.' The choir repeated the last line of the hymn 
four times. Then the prima donna leaped on to the first line, and slipped, 
and fell on to the second, and that broke let her through into the third. The 
other voices came in to pick her up, and got into a grand wrangle, and the 
bass and the soprano beat (women always do), and the bass rolled down 
into the cellar, and the soprano went up into the garret, but the latter kept 
on squalling as though the bass, in leaving her, had wickedly torn out all 
her back hair. I felt anxious about the soprano, and looked back to see 
if she had fainted; but found her reclining in the arms of a young man who 
looked strong enough to take care of her. 

"Now, I admit that we cannot all have such things in our churches. 
It costs like sixty. In the church of the Holy Bankak it costs one hundred 
dollars to have sung that communion piece; 'Ye wretched, hungry, starv- 
ing poor!' But let us come as near to it as we can. The tune Tisgah' 
has been standing long enough on 'Jo^^^^'s stormy banks.' Let it pass 



250 HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



over and get out of the wet weather. Good-bye, Antioch, Harwell and 
Boylston. Good-bye till we meet in glory. 

"But if the prescription of new tunes does not end congregational sing- 
ing, I have another suggestion. Get an irreligious choir, and put them in 
a high balcony back of the congregation. I know choirs who are made 
chiefly of religious people, or those, at least, respectful for sacred things. 
That will never do, if you want to kill the music. The theatrical troupe 
are not busy elsewhere on Sabbath, and you can get them at half price to 
sing the praises of the Lord. Meet them in the green room at the cost 
of the Black Crook and secure them. They will come to church with opera 
glasses, which will bring the minister so near to them they can from their 
high perch, look clear down his throat and see his sermon before it is de- 
livered. They will make excellent poetry on Deacon Goodsoul as he carries 
around the missionary box. They will write dear little notes to Gonzaldo, 
asking him how his cold is and how he likes gumdrops. Without interfer- 
ing with the worship below, they can discuss the comparative fashionable- 
ness of The Basque' and 'The Polonaise,' the one lady vowing she thinks 
the first style is 'horrid,' and the other saying she would rather die than 
be seen in the latter; all this while the chorister is gone out during sermon 
to refresh himself with a mint-julep, hastening back in time to sing the last 
Kyimn. How much like heaven it will be when, at the close of a solemn 
service, we are favored with snatches from Verdi's 'Trovatore,' Meyer- 
beer's 'Huguenots' and Bellini's 'Somnambula,' from such artists as 

Mademoiselle Squintelle, 
Prima Donna Soprano, from Grand Opera House, Paris. 

Signor Bombastani, . 
Basso Buffo, from Royal Italian Opera. 

Carl Scheniderine, 
First Baritone, of His Majesty's Theatre, Berlin. 

"If after three months of taking these two prescriptions the congrega- 
tional singing is not thoroughly dead, send me a letter directed to my name 
with the title of O, F. M. (Old Fogy in Music), and I will, on the receipt 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



251 



thereof, write another prescription, which I am sure will kill it dead as a 
door-nail, and that is the deadest thing in all history.'' 

Dr. Talmage gives in the following essay not only an excellent example 
of his humor but introduces us at the same time into the heart of his home- 
life. 

CARLO AND THE FBEEZER. 

"We had a jolly time at our tea-table this e¥ening. We had not seen 
our old friend for ten years. When I heard his voice in the hall it seemed 
like a snatch of 'Auld Lang Syne.' He came from Belleville, where was 
the first home we ever set up for ourselves. It was a stormy evening, and 
we did not expect company, but we soon made way for him at the table. 
Jennie was very willing to stand up at the corner; and after a fair napkin 
had been thrown over the place where she had dropped a speck of jelly, 
our friend and I began the rehearsal of other days. While I was alluding 
to a circumstance that occurred between me and one of my Belleville neigh- 
bors the children cried out with stentorian voice. Tell us about Carlo and 
the freezer;' and they kicked the leg of the table, and beat with both hands, 
and clattered the knives on the plate, until I was compelled to shout, 'Si- 
lence ! You act like a band of Arabs ! Frank, you had better swallow what 
you have in your mouth before you attempt to talk.' Order having been 
gained, I began: 

"We sat in the country parsonage, on a cold winter day, looking out of 
our back window toward the house of a neighbor. She was a model of kind- 
ness, and a most convenient neighbor to have. It was a rule that worked 
well for the parsonage, but rather badly for the neighbor, because on our 
side of the fence we had just begun to keep house, and needed to borrow 
everything, while we had nothing to lend, except a few sermons, which the 
neighbor never tried to borrow, from the fact that she had enough of them 
on Sundays. There is no danger that your neighbor will burn a hole in 
your new brass kettle if you have none to lend. It will excite no surprise 
to say that we had an interest in all that happened on the other side of the 
parsonage fence, and that any injury inflicted on so kind a woman would 
rouse our sympathy. 



252 HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



CARLO TACKLES THE FBEEZBB,. 

"On the wintry morning of which we speak our neighbor had been mak- 
ing ice-cream; but there being some defect in the machinery, the cream 
had not sufficiently congealed, and so she set the freezer containing the 
luxury on her back steps, expecting the cold air would completely harden 
it. What was our dismay to see that our dog Carlo, on whose early educa- 
tion we were expending great care, had taken upon himself the office of ice- 
cream inspector, and was actually busy with the freezer. We hoisted the 
window and shouted at him, but his mind was so absorbed in his under- 
taking he did not stop to Hsten. Carlo was a greyhound, thin, gaunt and 
long-nosed, and he was already making his way on down toward the bottom 
of the can. His eyes and all his head had disappeared in the depths of the 
freezer. Indeed, he w^as so far submerged that when he heard us, with quick 
and infuriate pace^ coming up close behind him, he could not get his head 
out, and so started with the encumbrance on his head, in what direction 
he knew not. No dog was ever in a more embarrassing position — freezer 
to the right of him, freezer to the left of him, freezer on the top of him, 
freezer under him. 

"So, thoroughly blinded, he rushed against the fence, then against the 
side of the house, then against a tree. He barked as though he thought 
he might explode the nuisance with loud sound, but the sound was confined 
in so strange a speaking-trumpet that he could not have known his own 
voice. His way seemed hedged up. Fright and anger and remorse and 
shame whirled him about without mercy. 

CALL OFF YOUR FREEZER. 

"A feeling of mirth fulness which sometimes takes me on most inappro- 
priate occasions, seized me, and I sat down on the ground, powerless at the 
moment when Carlo most needed help. If I only could have got near 
enough, I w^ould have put my foot on the freezer, and, taking hold of the 
dog's tail, dislodged him instantly; but this I was not permitted to do. At 
this stage of the disaster my neighbor appeared with a look of consterna- 
tion, her cap-strings flying in the cold wind. I tried to explain, but the afore- 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF T ALU AGE, 253 



said untimely hilarity hindered me. All I could do was to point at the fly- 
ing freezer and the adjoining dog and ask her to call off her freezer, and 
with assumed indignation, demand what she meant by trying to kill my 
greyhound. 

''The poor dog's every attempt at escape only wedged himself more 
thoroughly fast. But after a while, in time to save the dog, though not 
to save the ice-cream, my neighbor and myself effected a rescue. Edwin 
Landseer, the great painter of dogs and their friends, missed his best chance 
by not being there when the parishioner took hold of the freezer and the 
pastor seized the dog's tail, and, pulling mightily in opposite directions, 
they each got possession of their own property. 

"Carlo was cured of his love for luxuries, and the sight of a freezer on 
the back steps till the day of his death would send him howling away. 

BROAD ROAD TO TROUBLE. 

"Carlo found, as many people have found, that it is easier to get into 
trouble than to get out. Nothing could be more delicious than while he 
was eating his way in, but what miist have been his feelings when he found 
it impossible to get out ! While he was stealing the freezer the freezer stole 
him. 

"Lesson for dogs and men ! 'Come in,' says the gray spider to the house- 
fly; "I have entertained a great many flies. I have plenty of room, fine 
meals and a gay life. Walk on this suspension-bridge. Give me your hand. 
Come in, my sweet lady fly. These walls are covered with silk, and the 
tapestry is gobelin. I am a wonderful creature, 1 have eight eyes, and of 
course can see your best interest. Philosophers have written volumes about 
my antennae and cephalothorax.' House-fly walks gently in. The web 
rocks like a cradle in the breeze. The house-fly feels honored to be the 
guest of such a big spider. We all have regard for big bugs. 'But what 
is this?" cries the fly, pointing to a broken wing, and this fragment of an 
insect's foot. There must have been a murder here! Let me go back! Ha! 
ha! says the spider, the gate is locked^ the drawbridge is up. I only con- 
tracted to bring you in. I cannot afford to let you out. Take a drop of 



254 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF T ALU AGE, 



this poison, and it will quiet your nerves. I throw this hook of a fang over 
your neck to keep you from falling off. Word went back to the house-fly's 
family, and a choir of great green-bottled insects sang this psalm at the 
funeral : 

" 'An unfortunate fly a-visiting went, 

And in a gossamer web found himself pent.' 

ALL DOWN HILL. 

"The first five years of a dissipated life is comparatively easy, for it is 
all down hill ; but when the man wakes up and finds his tongue wound with 
blasphemies, and his eyes swimming in rheum, and the antennae of vice 
feeling along his nerves, and the spiderish poison eating through his very 
life, and he resolves to return, he finds it hard traveling, for it is up hill, 
and the fortresses along the road open on him their batteries. We go into 
sin hop, skip and jump; we come out of it creeping on all-fours. 

"Let flies and dogs and men keep out of mischief. It is ice-cream for 
Carlo clear down to the bottom of the can, but afterward it is blinded eyes 
and sore neck and great fright. It is only eighteen inches to go into the 
freezer; it is three miles out. For Robert Burns it is rich wine and clap- 
ping hands and carnival all the way going to Edinburgh; but going back, 
it is worn-out body, and lost estate, and stinging conscience, and broken 
heart, and a drunkard's grave. 

CARLO WANTED LUXURIES. 

"Better moderate our desires. Carlo had that morning as good a break- 
fast as any dog need to have. It was a law of the household that he would 
be well fed. Had he been satisfied with bread and meat, all would have 
been well. But he sauntered out for luxuries. He wanted ice-cream. He 
got it, but brought upon his head the perils and damages of which I have 
written. As long as we have reasonable wants we can get on comfortably, 
but it is the struggle after luxuries that fills society with distress, and popu- 
lates prisons, and sends hundreds of people stark mad. Dissatisfied with a 
plain house, and ordinary apparel, and respectable surrounding, they plunge 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF T ALU AGE, 



255 



their head into enterprises and speculations from which they have to sneak 
out in disgrace. Thousands of men have sacrificed honor and religion for 
luxuries, and died with the freezer about their ears. 

"Young Catchem has one horse, but wants six. Lives in a nice house 
on Thirtieth street, but wants one on Madison Square. Has one beautiful 
wife but wants four. Owns a hundred thousand dollars of Erie stock, but 
mants a million. Plunges his head in schemes of all sorts, eats his way to 
the bottom of the can till he cannot extricate himself, and constables, and 
sheriffs, and indignant society, which would have said nothing had he been 
successful, go to pounding him because he cannot get his head out." 

AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Dr. Talmage was a great home man. He loved to entertain a few chosen 
friends at his table, and the occasions were made happy by his genial humor. 
In his essay, Around the Tea Table, he gives a happy description of these 
little entertainments. 

"Our theory has always been, 'Eat lightly in the evening.' While, there- 
fore, morning and noon there is bountifulness, we do not have much on ouf 
tea-table but dishes and talk. The most of the world's work ought to be 
finished by six o'clock P. M. The children are home from school. The wife 
is done mending or shopping. The merchant has got through with drygoods 
or hardware. Let the ring of the tea-bell be sharp and musical. Walk into 
the room fragrant with Oolong or Young Hyson. Seat yourself at the tea- 
table wide enough apart to have room to take out your pocket handkerchief 
if you want to cry at any pitiful story of the day, or to spread yourself in 
laughter if some one propound an irresistible conundrum. 

TEA CUP THE QUEEN OP FATR DOMINIONS. 

•'The bottle rules the sensual world, but the tea cup is queen in all the fair 
dominions. Once this leaf was very rare, and fifty dollars a pound; and when 
the East India Company made a present to the king of two pounds and two 
ounces, it was considered worth a mark in history. But now Uncle Sam and 
his wife every year pour thirty million pounds of it into their saucers. Twelve 



256 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE, 



hundred years ago, a Chinese scholar by the name of Lo Yu wrote of tea, *It 
tempers the spirits and harmonizes the mind, dispels lassitude and relieves 
fatigue, awakens thought and prevents drowsiness, lightens and refreshes 
the body and clears the perceptive faculties/ Our own observation is that 
there is nothing that so loosens the hinge of the tongue, soothes the temper, 
exhilarates the diaphragm, kindles sociality and makes the future promising. 
Like one of the small glasses in the wall of Barnum's old museum, through 
which you could see cities and mountains bathed in sunshine, so, as you drink 
from the tea-cup, and get on toward the bottom so that it is sufficiently ele- 
vated, you can see almost anything glorious that you want to. We had a 
great-aunt who used to come from town with the pockets of her bombazine 
dress standing way out with nice things for the children, but she would 
come in looking black as a thunder-cloud until she had got through with her 
first cup of tea, when she would empty her right pocket of sugar-plums, and 
having finished her second cup would empty the other pocket, and after she 
had taken an extra third cup, because she felt so very chilly, it took all the 
sitting room and parlor and kitchen to contain her exhilaration. 

CONVEIISATION DEPENDS ON THE TEA. 

"Be not suprised if, after your friends are seated at the table, the style of 
the conversation depends very much on the kind of tea that the housewife 
pours for the guests. If it be genuine Young Hyson, the leaves of which are 
gathered early in the season, the talk will be fresh, and spirited, and sunshiny. 
If it be what the Chinese call Pearl tea, but our merchants have named Gun- 
powder, the conversation will be explosive, and somebody's reputation will 
be killed before you get through. If it be green tea, prepared by large infusion 
of Prussian blue and gypsum, or black tea mixed with pulverized black lead, 
you may expect there will be a poisonous effect in the conversation and the 
moral health damaged. The English Parliament found that there had come 
into that country two million pounds of what the merchants call lie tea,' and, 
as far as I can estimate, about the same amount has been imported into the 
United States; and when the housewife pours into the cups of her guests a 
decoction of this lie tea/ the group are sure to fall to talking about their 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF T ALU AGE. 



257 



neighbors, and misrepresenting everything they touch. One meeting of a 
'sewing society' up in Canada where this tea was served resulted in two law- 
suits for slander, four black eyes that were not originally of that color, the 
expulsion of the minister, and the abrupt removal from the top of the sexton's 
head of all capillary adornment. 

''But on our tea-table we will have first-rate Ningyong, or Pouchong, or 
Souchong, or Oolong, so that the conversation may be pure and healthy. 

TALMAGE AS A REPORTER. 

"We propose from time to time to report some of the talk of our visitors 
at the tea-table. W e do not entertain at tea many very great men. The fact 
is that great men at the tea-table for the most part are a bore. They are apt to 
be self-absorbed, or so profound I cannot understand them, or analytical of 
food, or nerv^ous from having studied themselves half to death, or exhume a 
piece of brown bread from their coat-tail because they are dyspeptic or make 
such solemn remarks about hydro-benzamide or sulphindigotic acid that the 
children get frightened and burst out crying, thinking something dreadful 
is going to happen. Learned Johnson, splashing his pompous wit over the 
table for Bos well to pick up, must have been a sublime nuisance. It was 
Goldsmith that he wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll. There is 
more interest in the dining-room when we have ordinary people than when 
we have extraordinary. 

"There are men and women who occasionally meet at our tea-table whose 
portraits are worth taking. There are Dr. Butterfield, Mr. Givemfits, Dr. 
Heavyasbricks, Miss Smiley and Miss Stinger, who come to see us. We 
expect to invite them all to tea very soon ; and as you will in future hear of 
their talk, it is better that I tell you now some of their characteristics. 

"Dr. Butterfield is one of our most welcome visitors at the tea-table. As 
his name indicates, he is both melting and beautiful. He always takes pleasant 
views of things. He likes his tea sweet; and after his cup is passed to him, 
he frequently hands it back and says, 'This is really delightful, but a little 
more sugar, if you please.' He has a mellowing effect upon the whole com- 
panyc After hearing him talk a little while, I find tears standing in my eyes 



258 HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



without any sufficient reason. It is almost as good as a sermon to see him 
wipe his mouth with a napkin. I would not want him all alone to tea, because 
it would be making a meal of sweetmeats. But when he is present with others 
of different temperament, he is entertaining. He always reminds me of the 
dessert called floating island, beaten egg on custard. On all subjects — 
political, social and religious — he takes the smooth side. He is a minister, 
and preached a course of fifty-one sermons on heaven in one year, saying that 
he would preach on the last and fifty-second Sunday concerning a place quite 
opposite in character ; but the audience assembling on that day in August, he 
rose, and said that it was too hot to preach, and so dismissed them imme- 
diately with a benediction. At the tea-table I never could persuade him to 
take any currant- jelly, for he always preferred strawberry- jam. He rejects 
acidity. 

BOTH SIDES OP THE SUBJECT. 

*'We generally place opposite him at the tea-table Mr. Givemfits. He is 
the very antipodes of Dr. Butterfield; and when the two talk, you get both 
sides of a subject. I have to laugh to hear them talk; and my little girl, at 
the controversial collisions, gets into such hysterics that we have to send her 
with her mouth full into the next room, to be pounded on the back to stop her 
from choking. My friend Givemfits is 'down on' almost everything but tea, 
and I think one reason of his nervous, sharp, petulant way is that he takes 
too much of this beverage. He thinks the world is very soon coming to an 
end and says. The sooner the better, confound it !' He is a literary man, a 
newspaper writer, a book critic, and so on ; but if he were a minister, he would 
preach a course of fifty-one sermons on 'future punishment,' proposing to 
preach the fifty-second and last Sabbath on 'Future rewards' ; but the last Sab- 
bath coming in December, he would say to his audience, 'Really, it is too cold 
to preach. We will close with the doxology and omit the benediction, as I 
must go down by the stove to warm.' 

"He does not like women — thinks they are of no use in the world, save to 
set the tea a-drawing. Says there was no trouble in Paradise till a female 
came there, and that ever since Adam lost the rib woman has been to man a 
bad pain in the side. He thinks that Dr. Butterfield, who sits opposite him 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE, 259 



at the tea-table, is something of a hypocrite, and asks him all sorts of puz- 
zling questions. The fact is it is vinegar-cruet against sugar-bowl in perpetual 
controversy. I do not blame Givemfits as much as many do. His digestion is 
poor. The chills and fever enlarged his spleen. He has frequent attacks of 
neuralgia. Once a week he has the sick headache. His liver is out of order. 
He has twinges of rheumatism. Nothing he ever takes agrees with him but 
tea, and that doesn't. He has had a good deal of trial, and the thunder of 
trouble has soured the milk of human kindness. When he gets criticizing 
Dr. Butterfield's sermons and books, I have sometimes to pretend that I hear 
somebody at the front door; so that I can go out in the hall and have an 
uproarious laugh w^ithout being indecorous. It is one of the great amusements 
of my life to have on opposite sides of my tea-table Dr. Butterfield and Mr. 
Givemfits." 

A DELIGHTFUL COMRADE. 

Dr. Talmage w^as a most delightful comrade for an outing. He was full 
of enthusiasm as a boy, and a bright day with a fresh breeze had a wonder- 
fully exhilarating effect upon him. In ''Crumbs Swept Up" he has the follow- 
ing delightful humorous description of a day in stirrups. The party was 
making a trip to Mount Washington. 

"Puff! puff! goes the locomotive, and the passengers for Mount Wash- 
ington are set down at the Tip-Top House.' So all the romance of climbing 
is gone. We shall yet visit the Holy Land with the 'Owl Train.' Who knows 
but the water of the Helicon may yet be made to turn a factory of shoe-pegs ? 
Bucephalus w^ould be a plain horse on Central Park, and Throckmorton's 
pointer, of history, is nothing, compared with our dog, sharp at the nose, thin 
at the flanks, long in the limb, and able to snuff up the track of the reindeer 
three miles away. We tell a story of olden times — that is, of three years ago, 
for the world no longer contents itself to turn once a day on its axis, but 
makes fifty revolutions a minute. 

"The breakfast hour of the Crawford House at the White Mountains is 
past, and word is sounded through all the halls of the hotel that those who 
desire to ascend Mount Washington must appear on the piazza. Thither we 
come, though an August morning, in mid-winter apparel. The ladies, who 



260 HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE, 

the evening before had Hghted up the parlors with the flash of diamonds, now 
appear in rough apparel, much of which has been hired from the porter of the 
hotel, who sticks out his sign of hats, coats, and skirts to let. A lady, minus 
hoops, minus laces, minus jewelry, plus a shaggy jacket, plus boots, plus a 
blanket, equals a lady equipped for the ascent of Mount Washington. 

"The horses came, unled, out of their stables, each one answering to his 
name — 'Spot,' 'White Stocking,' and 'Bouncer.' They were peculiar horses, 
unlike those you are accustomed to mount, their sides, their knees, and their 
fetlocks having the mark of the mountains. They had clambered terrible 
heights, and been cut again and again by the rocks. Not bit-champing horses, 
thunder-necked, but steady, serious, patient, the gloom of shadow and preci- 
pice in their eyes, a slight stoop in their gait, as though accustomed to move 
cautiously along places where it would be perilous to walk upright. We helped 
the ladies into the saddle, though we were all the time afflicted with the 
uncertainty as to whom we were helping, and not knowing whether the foot 
we put into the stirrup belonged to a Fifth-avenue belle or one not accustomed 
to such polite attentions. 

EXHILARATION OF HIGH ALTITUDE. 

"Thirty-five in all, we moved up the bridle-path, through the woods, a 
band of musicians playing a lively air. With what exhilaration we started we 
will not attempt to tell, for we were already at great altitudes, and had looked 
on the Kearsarge, and the Chocorua, and felt the stroke of those emotions that 
slide from the stupendous bowlders of the Willie peaks when one first gazes 
upon them. 

" 'General Scott,' considered the safest horse in all the mountains, began 
his upward career that morning by brushing off against a tree his fair rider. 
He did not seem sorry a bit, but looked round to me with a wink, as much as 
to say, 'I do not like to wear belles in the summertime,' and, while I stood 
shocked at the poverty of the pun, he seemed hardly able to keep from break- 
ing into a horse-laugh. 

"Orders pass along the line, 'Bear hard in the stirrup,' or 'Hold fast the 
pommel of the saddle!' Up a corduroy path we mounted, and wedged our- 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OP T AIM AGE. 261 



selves through narrow defiles, and height after height sank beneath, and the 
hoofs of the horse before us clattered close by the ears of our own trusty 
beast, that bore bravely on, though the white legs that gave to him the name 
White Stocking were already striped with blood struck out by the sharp edges 
of the first mountain. 

"After a while the guides commanded us to halt. We were coming to 
more exciting experiences. The horses' girths were taken up another hole 
into the buckle, and their shoes examined. Again we fall into line. The 
guide takes his position by a plunge of rocks so as to steady and encourage 
horses and riders. The ponies halt at the verge, look down, measure the dis- 
tances, and examine the places for a foothold. 

" 'Steady !' shouts the guide. 'Steady cry the riders, and down the rocks 
you go, now with a leap, now with a slide, now with a headlong stumble 
against which you jerk up the reins with all' your might, the horse recovering 
himself, and stopping midway the declivity for another look before a deeper 
plunge, until, all panting and a-tremble with the exertion, he stops to rest a 
moment at the foot of the rocks, and you turn round, put your hand on your 
pony's back, and watch others poised for the same leap. 

THE MAJESTY OF FROST. 

"Two hours more, and we have left vegetation behind us. Mountain-ash, 
and birch, and maple, which we saw soon after starting, cannot climb such 
steeps as these. Yes, we have come where spruce, and fir, and white pine 
begin to faint by the way, and in every direction you see the stark remains 
of the trees which have been bitten to death by the sharp white teeth of the 
frost. Yet God does not forsake even the highest peaks. The majesty of 
forests may be denied them, but the brow of this stupendous death hath its 
wreath of alpine plants, and its catafalque with bluebells and anemones. 

"After passing great reaches of desolation, you suddenly come upon a 
height garnished by a foam of white flowers dashed up from the sea of divine 
beauty. There, where neither hoof nor wheel can be traced, you find the 
track of God's foot in the turf, and on the granite, great natural laws written 
on 'tables of stone,' hurled down and broken by the wrath of the tempest. Oh ! 



262 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF T ALU AGE. 



how easy to see that the Divine care is here tending the white flocks of 
flowers which pick out their pasturage among the clefts. 

'We are now in the region of driving mist, and storm, and hurricane. 
The wind searches to the bone, and puts a red blossom on the soberest nose. 
It occurred to us that this must be the nest whete all the winds and storms 
of the country are hatched out, under the brooding wing and the iron beak 
of this great Mount Washington blast. The rain drips from the rim of our 
hats. Through the driving mist the advancing cavalcade look weird and 
spectral. Those coming behind and beneath you seem like ghosts traveling up 
from some nether world, and those before and above as though horsed on the 
wind. 

"Five of the party long ago turned back, overcome by cold, and fatigue, 
and fright, and, accompanied by one of the guides, are by this time safely 
housed. The rest are still advancing, and the guide with his long staff urges 
on the ponies. We are told that we are at the foot of the last steep. We can- 
not restrain our glee. We shout and laugh. The dullest man of all actually 
attempts a witticism. Our blood tingles! Hurrah for Mount Washington! 
W e talk to persons that we never knew as though they were old acquaintances. 
We praise our horse. We feel like passing over our right hand to our left 
and congratulating ourselves. Deacons, ministers, and the gravest of the 
grave sing snatches of John Brown, Yankee Doodle, and the Girl I Left 
Behind Me 

FORCE OF A CHAMPAGNE CORK. 

"Our dignity loses its balance and falls off, and rolls down the side of the 
mountain, six thousand two hundred and eighty-five feet, so that the proba- 
bility is that it will never again be recovered. We drive into the pen of rocks 
and as the party start on foot for the Tip-Top House a few rods off, we give 
one long, loud halloo, and the storms answer. 

"Having entered the house, we threw off our coats. We gathered around 
the red-hot stoves. Some sat down exhausted, others were hysterical from 
the excitement. Strong men needed to be resuscitated, but by the time the 
dinner-bell sounded, the whole party were sufficiently revived to surround the 
tables. 



HUMOR 'AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



263 



"It is astonishing with what force the cork of a champagne bottle will fly 
out. Two of the company were knocked over by one of these corks, and one 
of the two afterward fell from his horse and went rolling down the mountain. 
Elegant gentleman he was before the cork struck him, and had an elegant 
overcoat which he put up in a bet and lost, and would have been obliged to 
descend the mountain in a shivering condition (but for the guide who lent 
him a coat), through a hailstorm in which our horses stopped, and turned 
their backs, and refused to go till goaded on by the guides. With this excep- 
tion the dining hour was not marred. But while we were abundantly sup- 
plied, alas, for 'White Stocking,' 'Spot,' and 'Bouncer.' They stood in a 
roofless pen. Mountain horses have a hard life. Did we not pride ourselves 
on our orthodoxy, we would express the hope that these suffering beasts, so 
much wronged on earth, may have a future life, where, unharnessed and un- 
whipped, they may range in high, thick, luxuriant pasture forever and ever." 

CITY FOOLS ITT THE COTJNTEY. 

Dr. Talmage delighted in genial criticism. In an essay. City Fools in the 
Country, he discovers not only a clear understanding of rural life and scenes, 
but he draws many clever comparisons between the customs and manners of 
urban and suburbanites. "The city fool," he says, "hastens out at the first beck 
of pleasant weather. He wishes to sit in what poets call 'the lap of spring.' 
We have ourselves sat, several times, in her lap, and pronounce her the 
roughest nurse that ever had anything to do with us. Through March, April 
and May, for the last few years, the maiden seems to have been out of 
patience, and she blows, and frets, and spits in your face with storm, till, 
seemingly exhausted with worriment, she lies down at the feet of June. 

"The family of the city fool are, for the first ten days after going into the 
country, kept in the house by bad weather. It is the Paradise of mud. The 
soft ground, enraptured with the dainty feet of the city belle, takes their 
photograph all up and down the lane, and secures its pay by abstracting one 
of her overshoes up by the barn, and the other by the woods. Mud on the 
dress. Mud on the carriage-wheels. Mud on the door-step. A very carnival 
of mud ! 



264 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



"The city fool has great contempt for ordinary stock, and talks only of 
'high bloods/ His cattle are all Ayrshires, or Shorthorns, or Devons. But 
for some reason they do not give half as much milk as the awkward, un- 
heraldic mongrel breed that stand at nightfall looking through the neighbor's 
bars. 

FASHIONABLE HENS REFUSE TO LAY. 

'The poultry of our hero are Golden Hamburgs, and Buff Dorkings, and 
Bengaliers, and Cropple-crowns, and Black Polands and Chittaprats. But they 
are stingy of laying, and notwithstanding all the inducements of expensive 
coop, and ingenious nests, and handsome surroundings, are averse to any 
practical or useful expression. They eat, and drink, and cackle, and do 
everything but lay. You feed them hot mush, and throw lime out of which 
they are to make the shell, and strew ashes to kill the lice, and call on them 
by all the glorious memory of a distinguished ancestry to do something 
worthy of their name, but all in vain. Here and there an egg, dropped in 
the mud in preference to the appointed place, gives you a specimen of what 
they might do if they only willed. We owned such a hen. We had given an 
outrageous price for her. We lavished on that creature every possible kind- 
ness. Though useless, she made more noise than all the other denizens of the 
barn-yard, and, as some faithful hen came from her nest, would join in the 
cackle, as much as to say, 'Ain't we doing well ?' We came to hate the sight 
of that hen. She knew it well, and as she saw us coming, would clear the 
fence with wild squawk, as if her conscience troubled her. We would not 
give one of our unpretending Dominies for three full-blooded Chittaprats. 

"The city fool expects, with small outlay, to have bewitching shrubbery, 
and a very Fountainebleau of shade-trees, and pagodas, and summer-houses, 
and universal arborescence. He will be covered up with clematis and weigalia. 
The paths, white-graveled, innocent of weeds or grass, and round-banked, 
shall wind about the house, and twist themselves into all unexpectedness of 
beauty. If he cannot have a Chats worth Park, nine miles in circumference, 
he w^ill have something that will make you think of it. And all this will be 
kept in order by a few strokes of scythe, hoe, and trimming-knife. 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 



265 



NATURE SCORNS A NOVICE. 

"There is apt to be disappointment in crops. Even a stupid turnip knows 
a city fool as soon as it sees him. Marrowfat peas fairly rattle in their pods 
with derision as he passes. The fields are glad to impose upon the novice. 
Wandering too near the beehive with a book on honey-making, he got stung 
in three places. His cauliflowers turn out to be cabbages. The thunder spoils 
his milk. The grass-butter, that he dreamed of, is rancid. The taxes eat up 
his profits. The drought consumes his corn. The rust gets in his wheat. The 
peaches drop off before they ripen. The rot strikes the potatoes. Expecting 
to surprise his benighted city-friends with a present of a few early vegetables, 
he accidentally hears that they have had new potatoes, and green peas, and 
sweet corn for a fortnight. The bay mare runs away with the box-wagon. 
His rustic gate gets out of order. His shrubbery is perpetually needing the 
shears. It seems almost impossible to keep the grass out of the serpentine 
walks. A cow gets in and upsets the vase of flowers. The hogs destroy the 
watermelons, and the gardener runs off with the chamber-maid. Everything 
goes wrong, and farming is a failure. It always is a failure when a man 
knows nothing about it. If a man can afford to make a large outlay for his 
own amusement, and the health of his family, let him hasten to his country 
purchase. But no one, save a city fool, will think to keep a business in town, 
and make a farm financially profitable. 

"There are only two conditions in which farming pays. The first, when a 
man makes agriculture a life-time business, not yielding to the fatal itch for 
town which is depopulating the country, and crowding the city with a multi- 
tude of men standing idle with their hands in their own or their neighbors' 
pockets. The other condition is when a citizen with surplus of means, and 
weary of the excitements and confinements of city life, goes to the country, 
not expecting a return of dollars equal to the amount disbursed, but expects, 
in health, and recreation, and communion with nature, to find a wealth com- 
pared with which all bundles of scrip and packages of Government securities 
are worthless as the shreds of paper under the counting-room desk in the 
vv^aste-basket. Only those who come out of the heats of the town, know the 
full enchantment of country life. Three years ago, on the prongs of a long 



266 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF T ALU AGE. 



fork, with which we tossed the hay into the mow, we pitched away our last 
attack of 'the blues/ We can beat back any despondency we ever knew with 
a hoe-handle. Born and brought up in the country, we have, ever since we 
left it, been longing to go back, though doomed for most of the time to stay in 
town. The most rapturous lay of poet about country life has never come up 
to our own experiences. Among the grandest attractions about the Heavenly 
City are the trees, and the rivers, and the white horses. When we had a place 
in the country, the banquet lasted all summer, beginning with cups of crocus, 
and ending with glowing tankards of autumnal leaf. At Belshazzar's feast 
the knees trembled for the finger that wrote doom, but the hand-writing on 
our wall was that of honeysuckle and trumpet-creeper." 

WISHED McKIlTLEY WAS A PRBSBYTEBIAIT. 

There are many good stories current that were first told by Dr. Talmage. 
Soon after President McKinley's first election Dr. Talmage visited Canton, 
Ohio, and astonished the natives and the garrison of newspaper men one day 
by appearing in the throng of office seekers who crowded North Market street 
after every train arrival. He was asked the usual questions by reporters after 
he had had an interview with the President: "What is your mission here? 
Have you any candidacy to urge? Are you an office seeker?" 

*T have nothing whatever to do with politics," declared Dr. Talmage, with 
a broad smile. "But I am a Presbyterian, and I thought that perhaps Mr. 
McKinley, being of Scottish descent, was also a Presbyterian. But it turns 
out that he is a Methodist. He is, however, a conscientious man, and I 
admire him and hope to have the opportunity of preaching to him some- 
times." 

McKinley laughed heartily when he heard that Dr. Talmage had spoken 
somewhat mournfully of his nonancestral church allegiance. 

"Why doesn't Talmage turn Methodist?" President McKinley asked, 
with a chuckle. "He might get me then, although my friend, Dr. Man- 
chester, has first call. The change would make a good deal of difference to 
me, but surely it wouldn't make much to Dr. Talmage, who is, I understand, 
an exceedingly independent Presbyterian — almost a Congregationalist — z 
Talmage Congregation-alist !" 



HUMOR AND PATHOS OF TALMAGE. 267 



A GOOD REPORTER. 

Dr. Talmage frequently made the remark: "I would have made a fine 
newspaper man, wouldn't I ? Don't you think that there was a good reporter 
and correspondent lost in me?" When Colonel Cockerill was president of 
the New York Press Club he once heard Dr. Talmage asking those questions, 
and said: 

''Why, doctor, I would give you a job right away, even now, but I'm 
afraid that some of us might go broke on blue pencils." 

This statement puzzled Talmage until he learned what it meant, and 
ever after, when any newspaper published only fragments of his sermons or 
addresses, he would say: 'T was blue-penciled to death in the Daily So- 
and-So." 

FROM COVER TO COVER. 

During the time of the earlier heresy discussions in New York, a reporter 
asked Dr. Talmage how much of the Bible he really believed, that is to say, 
believed verbally and literally. 

"All of it," said Talmage, "from cover to cover. There is a real heaven 
and a physical hell, and the painful anxiety of some fellows to modify the 
biblical hell or do away with it altogether won't have any effect on their 
destinies." 

"What destinies ?" asked the reporter, in order to hear what Dr. Talmage 
would say. 

"Why, their eternal destinies. Do you think that changing a creed or 
giving new interpretations to the Bible will really enable anybody to dodge 
the devil?" 

GREAT PERSOITAL MAGISTETISM. 

Talmage possessed a great degree of personal magnetism and could in- 
fluence many of his hearers to an extraordinary degree. It was not uncommon 
for a fainting woman to be carried from among his audience, overcome, not 
by the heat of the hall or church, but by the tremendous impression produced 
by the orator. 

Although the English public, who wanted to hear him preach, did not 



268 HUMOR AND PATHOS OF T ALU AGE, 



take kindly to Dr. Talmage as a mere lecturer, yet in his own country several 
of his lectures were highly popular. There was one lecture in particular, en- 
titled 'The Bright Side of Things," which never failed to attract large 
audiences. 

'Tt is my favorite topic, and I suppose that is why," said Dr. Talmage 
when asked about it. *T have tried all my life to see the bright side of things, 
and if everybody else would make the attempt it would be a brighter and a 
happier world." 

It would be easy to fill a volume with humorous extracts from the authentic 
writings of Dr. Talmage. He was oftentimes like a big earnest boy. He felt 
the seriousness of life fully, but his nature would not let him weep over the 
world when he could by any possibility make that world happier by laughing 
with him at its minor faults and foibles. When it came to the discussion 
of real sins there was an end to all levity. Nothing but sledge-hammer 
blows for the devil in man. But those who knew him personally as well as 
those who have read and will continue to read him will never cease to be 
grateful to nature for bestowing upon the rousing, radical preacher the cap 
and bells which he donned at times with such pleasing effect. 



CHAPTER XV, 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 

THE CHARGE AND SPECIFICATIONS THE DETAILS OF THE TRIAL ''aWAY 

WITH TECHNICALITIES AND GIVE US ETERNAL JUSTICE!" THE ACQUIT- 
TAL OF TALMAGE BY THE PRESBYTERY PUBLIC OPINION PRO AND CON 

AS EXPRESSED IN THE NATION AND ELSEWHERE THE GREAT TRIUMPHS 

OF TALMAGE SUBSEQUENT TO THE TRIAL. 

On Wednesday, March 12th, 1879, it was announced that the Brooklyn 
Presbytery had decided on a pubhc trial of Mr. Talmage on March 24th. 

The Rev. Arthur Crosby, the chairman of the accusing committee, an- 
nounced that the charges against the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage were those 
of falsehood and deceit. Mr. Talmage urged that there be no delay in pro- 
ceeding with the investigation. In the course of the preliminary hearing 
Mr. Talmage inquired if members of the committee on investigation would 
have a right to vote in the trial, and sarcastically nominated Rev. Arthur 
Crosby and the Rev. Dr. Van Dyke, his bitter personal enemies, to act as 
prosecutors. Dr. Van Dyke declined, but the Rev. Crosby and the Rev. 
McCullough were, as a matter of fact, selected as the prosecuting committee. 

At 9 a. m. on the morning of March 12th the Presbytery convened and 
a large audience was present to witness the preliminary hearing. In the 
audience was Mrs. Talmage. After Dr. Ludlow, the moderator, had opened 
this "Court of Jesus Christ" with prayer, and the formal business of the 
opening had been disposed of, Mr. Talmage embraced an opportunity to 
speak and said that in the first arraignment of himself and of his church 
before the Presbytery nine years previous to this time that trial was a fizzle 
for the Presbytery and a triumph for the Tabernacle. The discussion on this 
day was mainly technical and the point of chief interest was that Dr. Spear 
was requested by Talmage to act as his counsel. Dr. Spear pleaded the 
infirmities of his seventy years, but finally, after much urging by friends of 

269 



270 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



Talmage all over the country, who said that it was his duty to clear Talmage 
of these charges even at the sacrifice of his own physical health, he con- 
sented to act. 

OPENING OF THE TRIAL. 

On March 24th the trial opened with a motion on the part of the de- 
fendant to quash three of the seven specifications of the indictment. The 
Rev. Dr. J. M. Ludlow, the Moderator, granted the motion, but a long 
debate followed, the motion was put to the vote of the Presbytery, and 
the presiding officer was compelled to withdraw his decision. In a forcible 
speech Mr. Talmage again demanded a thorough investigation. Dr. B. F. 
Millard, the associate counsel for Talmage, denied the jurisdiction of the 
Presbytery on several of the specifications. It was agreed, on account of 
the infirmity of Dr. Spear, that there should be but a single daily session of 
three hours during the trial. It was this which made it of such long duration. 

The audience was large, few clergymen but many ladies being present, 
many of them parishioners of Dr. Talmage. Even the aisles were filled, 
and at interesting points in the trial some people even stood on seats in 
order to catch every syllable of what was going on. Applause was often 
repressed with difficulty. Mr. Talmage responded to his name on the roll 
call with a deep, almost gutteral, "Here." When the Moderator asked the 
question, 'Ts the accused present?" Talmage responded by rising, and at 
the next question, "How does the accused plead?" Dr. Spear arose hastily 
with the words, "Not guilty." The aged doctor repeated the declaration 
that the Presbytery had no jurisdiction on several specifications, declared 
the whole proceeding a mistake in policy on the part of the church, and 
demanded a fair and impartial trial. 

During these proceedings the face of Mr. Talmage was pale and his lips 
tightly shut. He suddenly arose, stood with folded arms and eyes downcast, 
seemed to draw the attention of all magnetically to him and demanded an 
investigation upon all the specifications. Speaking with the same vehe- 
mence and the same striking pauses which characterized him in his pulpit, he 
said there had been an attempt to assassinate his character and all he wanted 
was to find out who the assassins were and how to arrest them. Unmoved 



THE TRIAL OF, TALMAGE. 



271 



either by the applause or the hisses which followed, he said that the whole 
truth must come out either here or before the Kings County Grand Jury. *1 
have been guilty of no wrong," he cried, ''and I demand justice!" 

The prosecuting committee got the worst of it in technical points of 
debate which followed. Dr. Van Dyke, prosecutor of Talmage, said, "Mr. 
Talmage's speech just now was the best I have ever heard from him. It 
went through me like quicksilver." 

THE CHARGE AND SPECIFICATIONS. 

Letters to the Presbytery were read from six witnesses, declining to 
appear in the case against Talmage. The reading of the charge and the 
seven specifications followed. 

"Charge — The Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage stands charged by common 
fame with falsehood and deceit. 

"Specification First — In that he acted deceitfully and made statements 
which he knew to be false in the matter of his withdrawal from the editor- 
ship of The Christian at Work in the month of October, 1876. 

"Second — In that he published or allowed to be published statements 
he knew to be false in defence of his action referred to in the first specifica- 
tion. 

"Third — In that he made public declaration from his pulpit that the 
church of which he was pastor was a free church, and that the sittings were 
assigned without reference to the dollar question, although he knew such 
declaration to be false. 

"Fourth — In that, in the winter of 1876-77, he falsely accused 1. W. 
Hathaway of dishonest practises, and afterwards denied that he had done so. 

"Fifth — In that, in the early part of the year 1878, he endeavored to 
obtain false subscriptions toward payment of the debt of the church, to be 
deceitfully used for the purpose of inducing others to subscribe. 

"Sixth — In that, in 1878, he acted deceitfully in reference to the re- 
engagement of the organist of the Tabernacle of the Presbyterian church. 

"Seventh — In that he pubHcly declared on Sunday, February 2d, 1879, 
that all the newspapers said he was to be arraigned for heterodoxy, and 



272 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



used other expressions calculated to give the impression that he was to be 
arraigned on that charge, although he knew that he would be arraigned, 
if at all, on the charge of falsehood, thereby deceiving the people." 

The immediate answer to the charge and specifications by Talmage was 
in substance this: "I am not guilty and I can prove it." He showed that 
the Presbytery had adopted charge and specifications on the ground of mere 
general rumors. He pointed out violations of the laws of the Book of 
Discipline in preparing the case against him. He showed inherent flaws in 
specifications three and seven, stating that they were not only trivial in 
themselves but utterly impossible of proof. Indeed, these specifications 
were dropped by the prosecution before the end of the trial. It was devel- 
oped that technically Talmage and his counsel could have thrown out every 
one of the specifications — two of them under an ecclesiastical statute of 
limitations, the alleged events having occurred nine years before the time 
of the trial. But said Talmage: "I want somehow to have those specifica- 
tions to stand until we can blow them to atoms, for we shall be able to prove 
either in trial or in investigation that I not only did no wrong but that I 
made no mistake, and that every intelligent man, regardful of his own rights, 
under the same circumstances would have done precisely as I did. Now, 
away with your technicalities and give us eternal justice!" 

This, it will be understood, in spite of the fact that the technicalities 
were all in his own favor. The voice is that of a mind conscious of being 
right 

THE PROSECUTION STUNG BY LAUGHTER. 

The next day Mr. Crosby, counsel for the prosecution, having had the 
laugh turned against him time after time, requested the Moderator not to 
permit loud laughter in the court. 

"That," said the Moderator, "will depend upon the degree of mirthful- 
ness excited by the counsel." 

Mr. Crosby then urged the audience to refrain from laughter, "although," 
said he, "I need not say that I know where the sympathies of the audience 
are and where the sympathies of the city are." 

They were, of course, with Talmage. A vote on the question as to the 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



273 



admission in evidence of certain newspaper interviews with Talmage resulted 
eighteen to eleven in favor of non-admission, a victory for the defendant. 

The first specification against Talmage accused him of secretly inserting 
in the paper, The Christian at Work, a valedictory editorial announcing that 
he had accepted the editorship of the Advance, and that this editorial was 
really a pufT of the Advance set up by the foreman after hours by order of 
Talmage. Talmage, it was claimed, went to the press-room with the fore- 
man, took out of the paper another editorial, and inserted this one in its 
place. 

Mr. Remington, a managing owner of The Christian at Work, said on 
direct examination that in this matter Mr. Talmage had done him a great 
wrong, but on cross-examination, his voice was very weak, he stated that 
he did not know that Talmage had done any deceitful act, and admitted 
that his own conduct immediately after Talmage's withdrawal from his 
paper might be blameworthy. The other witnesses did little better on cross- 
examination. The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher watched the trial with inter- 
est on this day. 

BEFENSE AND ACQUITTAL. 

On April 15th, after three weeks of trial, the defense opened, declared 
the prosecution had utterly broken down, and made a motion to dismiss the 
charge and specifications. This motion, made by Mr. Talmage's associate 
counsel, was withdrawn at the request of Dr. Spear, his counsel. 

In regard to the accusation that the pew system of the Tabernacle was 
not really free. Major Corwin's testimony showed that Talmage had refused 
to auction off the pews, although told that if he would do it they would 
raise his salary from seven thousand to twenty thousand dollars a year. He 
answered: "When you get an auctioneer you must get a new pastor." 

At the end of the fourth week of the trial Talmage himself went on the 
stand and produced a most favorable impression. 

It turned out that the formidable-looking ''organist" specification 
amounted to the fact that Mr. Talmage had promised to give a notice about 
a concert and then forgot to do it. A cross-examination of four days failed 



THE TRIAL OP TALMAGE. 



to shake Mr. Talmage's testimony, and then his counsel abruptly closed the 
testimony of the defense. In summing up the case the venerable Dr. Spear 
said, "Dr. Talmage is not the man I used to suppose him to be. I took 
him to be odd, strange, startling, sensational by design, study and art, but 
I now see that nature has given him such form of thought and modes of 
expression as must carry along with them much of what very sober people 
call indiscretion and imprudence. I see that he has an intellectual and emo- 
tional organization remarkably unique, his own and not another's — one that 
cannot be trimmed, cramped or frozen without undermining the foundations 
of his great powers. He must be himself however much the critics may 
snarl at him, and when and where he is himself there is in him an immense 
amount of that which is good and strong, but having pecuHarities and infirm- 
ities that sometimes shadow the clear luster of his genius. I did not see 
formerly, as I do now, the fervent rush of his emotional nature, that neces- 
sarily involves some imprudence, nor permits the tongue to measure its 
own words with perfect exactitude, nor waits for the cool and careful analysis 
of deliberate judgment." 

In other words, Dr. Spear unconsciously analyzed the creative, imag- 
inative temperament of all time, all artists, all poets. He goes on to analyse 
the charge and seven specifications and claims that not a single fact had been 
estabhshed that was inconsistent with the entire honesty and good faith of 
Dr. Talmage. He says among other things, "He has been as true to his 
theory of a free church as the needle to the pole and his people have followed 
him. ^ ^ ^ The accusation has not left a stain upon his. garments." 

This summing up was made on May ist after a nearly continuous session 
extending over six weeks. The prosecution summed up its case in Mr. 
Crosby's speech next day, and on Monday, May 5th, the Presbytery declared 
the acquittal of Dr. Talmage by a vote of eleven to five. An appeal was 
afterwards made to the Synod, but nothing ever came of it. 

One of the judges declared that he wished he were Mr. Talmage, for 
said he, "with all his faults, he has less than us all." Another declared his 
belief in "the fundamental simpHcity and innocence of the man." 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



275 



THE SPEECH OF A PROSECUTOR. 

The great court of public opiiiion agreed with the judge, but dis- 
cussion of the question was kept alive by reports that the case would be ap- 
pealed by the prosecutors of Talmage. Nine months afterward The Nation 
quotes concerning the trial a speech then just published and comments as 
follows: ''The Rev. J. M. Sherwood, who w^as one of the prosecuting coun- 
sel in the last trial, has published his speech, which is curious reading, inas- 
much as it enforces on the Synod the desirableness of respecting within the 
Church the prejudices of the outside world on questions of 'fundamental 
morals.' He makes some very severe observations, apropos of this, on the 
reHgious press, and produces a quotation from one of the religious papers, 
which objects to trying Talmage for falsehood and deceit, not because he is 
innocent, but because 'As it is now the golden time of autumn when city 
people are coming back from the country, and churches begin to be full, 
and ministers preach with new zeal and hope, and look for blessed revivals of 
rehgion, it would be a thousand pities if this peace and harmony and the 
brooding influences of the Spirit were all driven aw^ay by the reopening of 
an ecclesiastical trial which has vexed the ears of the Christian public much too 
long.' These and other things are making a great many people ask whether 
some of the churches have not got a good way towards the old pagan idea 
of religion, which assumed that the favor of the gods was won by prayer 
and praise simply, and was in no way conditioned on the good behavior of 
the worshippers." 

AlfSWER BY DR. FIELD. 

This article called forth from Dr. Henry M. Field a letter to the editor of 
The Nation, in which, after quoting the above editorial, he says: "Here is 
wisdom. You find a stray sentence quoted in a speech (the animus of which 
might well have made you suspicious); you quote it at second-hand, without 
stopping to ask where it came from, or in what connection it was intro- 
duced; and on this sentence, taken out of its place, with 'other things' of 
a like character, you jump to the conclusion that 'some of the churches have 
got a good way towards the old pagan idea of religion, which assumed that 



276 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



the favor of the gods was won by prayer and praise simply, and was in no 
way conditioned on the good behavior of the worshippers!' This is a pretty 
serious imputation^ — that a portion of the Church is returning to paganism, 
and its ministers, forsooth, are Httle better than the priests of Jupiter! 

"Now, if you had taken the sHghtest pains to Verify your references' (to 
quote the advice of Dean Stanley to theological students), and to 'study 
the context' you would have seen that the article quoted from did not war- 
rant at all the complexion which you gave it. It was not a defence of Mr. 
Talmage; nor did it, as you affirm, 'object to trying him for falsehood and^ 
deceit.' He had been tried already. For weeks the Presbytery of Brooklya 
had done nothing else than sit in judgment on the case. They had sifted 
every particle of testimony, and at the end had heard it summed up in argu- 
ments of great ability on both sides; after all which they rendered their 
verdict, that the charges were not sustained, and the case was dismissed. 
Was not that a 'trial' long enough in all conscience? After that, months 
passed; Mr. Talmage went abroad for the summer. When he returned in 
the autumn the question arose whether those who had pressed the matter 
with so much z^al before, and been defeated, should 'go at it again,' and fill 
the public prints with their uproar and strife? This was a question of prac- 
tical wisdom, and the only question which was considered in the article to 
which you refer. 

"WHO MADE YOTJ JUDGE OVER US?'' 

"As to your statement that it 'objected to trying Talmage, not because 
he was innocent,' this, too, conveys an impression that is totally false. The 
question of 'innocence' was not raised at all, nor on that did it express any 
opinion. To do so would have been a great want of decorum. The article 
was designed for the members of the Presbytery, the very men who had 
conducted the trial and w^ere famiHar with the testimony. For an outsider 
to give them a flippant opinion of the merits of a case on which they had 
deliberated for a whole month would have been an assumption of superior 
wisdom, which they might justly have resented as an impertinence, and ask, 
'Who made you judge over us?' 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



277 



"But there was one thing which one who was in friendly relations with 
all parties could say without offence, and with a faint hope of a good result — 
to-wit: That those who had felt it to be their duty in the premises to bring 
Mr. Talmage to trial, had done it, and were absolved from any further obli- 
gation. Writers on ethics insist much on 'the limitations of human responsi- 
bility/ In this case it seemed that that limit had been reached. Their 
troubled consciences might be relieved. They could wash their hands of the 
whole business, assured that, however 'guilty' Mr. Talmage might be, they 
at least were not partakers of his sin. 

"Such was the feeling which prompted the article in question. It was 
not written in the interest of Mr. Talmage nor of his accusers, but in the 
interest of pubHc decency, which was outraged by this constant dragging 
before the public of what had been discussed ad nauseam. 

"The additional motive which appears in the sentence you quote is one 
which you do not feel the force of, and deride as a 'pagan idea' — mere cant 
and hypocrisy — but it was one which would be felt by every serious and 
devout pastor in Brooklyn, to whom it was addressed. 

"Upon reflection I think you will agree that so small a text was not well 
chosen to point so grave a moral; that a bit of friendly advice, the dictate of 
common sense and of the kindest feeling, was hardly sufficient to warrant the 
inference that 'some of the churches' are relapsing into paganism, or 'have 
got a good way towards pagan ideas!' " 

EDITORIAL REPLY TO EIELD. 

To this letter the editor of The Nation replied as follows: "Dr. Field, 
we are sorry to say, has fallen into something 'like 'journalism' in the fore- 
going. We did not say 'these and other things of a like character.' We 
said 'these and other things,' and we meant other things of a different char- 
acter. Nor did we 'in this single sentence taken out of its place,' etc. We 
said that these and other things 'were making a good many people ask 
whether some of the churches,' etc. — i. e., these and other things were cre- 
ating doubts in the public mind about the attitude of some of the churches 
with regard to the relations of religion and morals. The observation on 



278 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



*the priests of Jupiter' makes us fear that Dr. Field read our remarks in a 
state of excitement. We have since read the article from which Mr. Sher- 
wood quoted, which when we received his speech we had not seen. We 
must say frankly that we think it shows that the writer was more troubled 
by the scandal of Talmage's trial than by the possibility: of his guilt, and 
thought the interests of religion would be best served by dropping the ques- 
tion of his guilt, or, in other words, justifies the construction put on it by 
Mr. Sherwood. Dr. Field seems to us to labor under a misapprehension 
as to what took place before the Presbytery. The facts were not disputed, 
but the court divided on their moral complexion. This, according to our 
view, made it the duty of the prosecutors to carry the case up on appeal, 
and get a still more authoritative decision, if possible, on the morality of 
Talmage's conduct. In fact, we are not sure that they would not have been 
justified in carrying it to the General Assembly for the same purpose. If 
the Presbyterian church thinks that Talmage's acts in the slander charge, 
the telegram charge, and the subsequent 'moral rottenness' performance in 
his pulpit, were harmless, or merely imprudent, the public ought to learn it 
from the highest authority in the church. With all respect to Dr. Field 
as a theologian, we deny that 'the brooding influences of the Spirit are driven 
away' by ecclesiastical trials; they are driven away by the bad behavior of 
pastors and church members, and the feebleness of church organizations on 
questions of fundamental morals. We do not mean to be irreverent, there- 
fore, in advising the religious press to give itself no concern about the Spirit, 
but to keep a sharp eye on the Talmages." 

As the editor of The Nation had the woman's privilege of the last word 
in his controversy with Dr. Field, he naturally leaves the whole discussion 
in a light very favorable to his own view of the subject. We quote it not as 
the truth about Talmage — the actual details of the trial which we have given 
above come much nearer to doing that — but simply to show the point of view 
and the methods of his opponents. 

ARTICLE OIT BUFFOONERY. 

There is another article published before the trial by the same paper, 
and this article, although it betrays an abounding ignorance of the real facts 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 279 

> 

of the controversy between Talmage and his accusers, has nevertheless a 
certain historical value as showing the impression which his preaching had 
made upon a certain type of mind. It explains also, to a certain extent, the 
later attitude which The Nation, in order to preserve consistency, was forced 
to adopt toward Talmage even after his acquittal by the Presbytery and 
by the more overwhelming acquittal which he received from immense multi- 
tudes, who in the summer after the trial came first under the spell of his 
voice and pen. This article was published, while the controversy was in its 
incipient stage, three months before the beginning of the trial. 'The pro- 
posed trial — perhaps we should say the pending trial — of Mr. Talmage, of 
Brooklyn, for untruthfulness and charlatanry, is an attempt of the church to 
deal with a growing evil, namely, the tendency to make church-going 
attractive by a bouffe treatment of religious subjects in the pulpit. It is not 
likely to succeed, because to put down a bouffe preacher he must be attacked 
in the very beginning of his career, and none of the existing organizations 
of the Protestant church ever prosecute a minister at all if they can possibly 
avoid it, or prosecute him one minute sooner than they can help. All 
ministers naturally recoil from the task of holding up a brother minister 
to public odium, and most church-members naturally dislike making a 
church scandal, if for no other reason, on account of the discredit it is likely 
to bring on religion itself. Then, bouffe treatment, too, is a thing difficult 
of definition. In its earlier stages the line which separates it from merely 
picturesque or warm treatment may be very faint. No preacher becomes 
markedly bouffe all of a sudden. Consequently he may go on for years 
grieving the judicious and making the worldlings laugh before there is any- 
thing positive enough in his performances to warrant an ecclesiastical court 
in laying hold of him. By the time it does make up its mind to call him 
to account he has, by the ordinary process of selection, collected a congre- 
gation who like him for his defects, and are prepared to stand by him, come 
what may, and who, in fact, would not 'sit under him' if he were not guilty 
of the very offenses with which he is charged. Under these circumstances 
he is, of course, prepared to defy the constituted authorities, and indeed 
comes into court not to plead but to rebuke them for annoying him, know- 



280 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



ing well that their verdict will not be and cannot be followed by any penalty 
which he will heed. The trial, therefore, is apt to be a farce, in which the 
culprit plays the leading and popular part, and by which the church organ- 
ization is made ridiculous." We need hardly point out that the wise editor 
betrays ignorance of the real charge against Mr. Talmage. There was 
never the slightest attempt to try him for his picturesque pulpit methods. 

We give, however, what the editor has to say on the bouffe tendency 
of Talmage, not for its bearing on the ecclesiastical case, but because it 
shows the attitude of the editor's class. ''The bouffe tendency is one result 
of the change in the minister's position wrought by the decay of popular 
interest in doctrinal theology. When the minister was the trained and duly 
commissioned exponent of what was accepted as a science, the conclusions 
of which every man felt bound to ascertain from authorized sources, the 
poorest preacher could rely with more or less confidence on his' subject to 
secure him a hearing. Those who refused or failed to hear him because he 
was dull, felt that they did so at their peril. He was really in the position 
of a physician charged with the cure of souls, and his knowledge was his 
main qualification, his manner of communicating it a minor consideration. 
With the decline of interest in dogmas and the growth of doubt about 
all the principal points of the Christian creed,'"the minister has become more 
of a lecturer on morality, and less of an expounder of the law. In other 
words, he speaks with less authority than he need to speak, and has to rely 
more than formerly on his natural gifts. 

SLEEPING IN CHURCH. 

"This change in his position has been strikingly illustrated by the history 
of the practice or weakness of sleeping in church. This is distinctly a 
Protestant weakness. It was unknown before the Reformation, and is un- 
known now in the Catholic church, where the frequent changes of posture, 
and the, duty of praying himself instead of following the priest, keeps the 
worshiper's attention aroused. Drowsiness made its appearance in the 
Protestant church as the accompaniment of long extemporaneous sermons 
and prayers, which imposed upon the worshiper the simple duty of listen- 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



281 



ing in one position and at the same time exposed him to that most soporific 
of all influences — the sound of a steady flow of words, the sense of which 
does not excite eager attention. The result was that the difficulty of keeping 
awake in church was for two centuries among Protestants one of the serious 
questions of a religious life, and all sorts of artificial contrivances were re- 
sorted to to combat it, such as standing up, and the application of titillating 
substances to the mucous membrane like fennel seed or 'meetin' seeds,' lem- 
on-peel, and calamus or 'sweet-flag,' and at a later period pepper lozenges. It 
furnished, too, the material for a very large proportion of the ecclesiastical 
facetiae of the eighteenth and the earlier part, of the present century. What 
was remarkable about it then, however, was that the blame of it was not 
thrown on the preacher. It was considered the hearer's duty to stay awake, 
not the preacher's duty to keep him awake. A minister was not liable to 
be dismissed for not rousing the attention of the somnolent, and people 
kept up without faltering their attendance at a church where they knew 
that as soon as the sermon began sleep would come upon them as a strong 
man armed. Under these circumstances there was little temptation to pulpit 
extravagances or oddities of any kind, or to anything like what may be 
called inflammatory treatment of sacred subjects. The idea that the Gospel 
could be made an amusing theme never entered any one's head. A min- 
ister's main concern was to avoid flaws in his theology and defects of logic 
in his argument, and sermons had a good many of the characteristics of the 
oratory listened to by judges sitting in banco. 

"In our time, however, a great change has come over the church-goer's 
spirit. He has thrown away his 'meetin' seed' and pepper lozenges, and has 
imposed on the preacher the task of keeping him awake. If he finds himself 
sleepy in church, he either goes oft' to another or gets up an agitation for 
the pastor's dismissal on the ground that he 'doesn't interest the young 
people,' or stays at home altogether. He unconsciously compares him with 
the popular lecturer on slavery, or on temperance, or on the Holy Land, 
who has within the last forty years made a practice of visiting him every 
winter. If he lives in the city, he compares him with his neighbor's pastor, 



282 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



who has filled all the pews at high rates and set the trustees to talking of 
building further up town. The consequences are that the pressure on the 
clergy for popularity of method among us is, at this moment, such as has 
never been known in any other age or nation. It has converted the churches 
into competing lyceums, or places of entertainment, and the competition is 
not confined to particular groups or denominations. Every church, no mat- 
ter of what denomination, com.petes with every church of every other de- 
nomination because denominational ties now sit so lightly that a Presby- 
terian has little difficulty in becoming an EpiscopaHan, Methodist, or Baptist, 
in order to get the benefit of a more attractive service; and the Episcopalian, 
Methodist, or Baptist, in his turn, is equally facile. It is but just to the 
congregations to say that they are very ready to help the minister out in 
the struggle with costly architecture and music and other external attrac- 
tions. In fact, nothing is left undone to make the church a place where 
people shall not only find it easy to stay awake but shall be enlivened and 
entertained, and have their sensibilities touched by the most efficacious 
methods. 

PULPIT DEVICES. 

"Of course this pressure operates very differently in different cases. It 
has probably made a good deal of change in all preaching. It has made 
doctrinal sermons, properly so called, very rare, and in fact made nearly all 
pulpit oratory didactic rather than exegetical. The pulpit's prevaifing themes 
are the duties and temptations of every-day life. It devotes itself mainly 
now, as has been said, to touching morality with the fire of emotion. It 
discusses politics a good deal under the name of 'questions of the day.* It 
has always done so, perhaps a good deal more so formerly than now, but 
with this difference, that the old preacher discussed politics distinctly as a 
theologian from the point of view of authority, and judged men and meas- 
ures a priori by the aid of Scriptural texts. The modern minister, on the 
other hand, does not hesitate to meet the utilitarian statesmen on their own 
ground, and to dispute with them over their own tests and standards, and 
to put temporal happiness in the foreground as the reward of wise legislation. 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



283 



The amount of preaching of this kind one can hear nowadays is very great. 
In fact, the most spiritually-minded ministers feel the absolute necessity of 
supplying a certain amount of it through the year, both as something the 
congregation looks for, and as part of their own mission. The Rev. Joseph 
Gooke's ^prelude' or preliminary remarks on current events with which he 
prefaces his lectures on religious themes, is a curious recognition of the 
popular requirements on this point. The 'prelude' is evidently intended 
to put the audience in good humor preparatory to the dryer and more 
exacting matter which is to follow, and recalls, if one may say so without 
disrespect, the chromo by which the editor of the religious newspaper in- 
duces the new subscriber to listen to him for one year on the solemn themes 
of life and death and judgment. Other regular ministers have resorted to 
the same expedient, and treat their congregation to a few minutes of 'secular 
matter' before beginning the ordinary religious exercises of the day. 

"But the roll of a didactic moralist is a very trying one. It is not every 
man, no matter what his parts or training, who can fill it even moderately 
well. The rules of right living are few and simple, and are well known. 
Nothing has been added to them in eighteen hundred years, and the world, 
in these days of endless iteration, has almost grown weary of them. But 
the application of them has been rendered increasingly difficult by the im- 
mense complexity of modern life, by the wondrous tangle of conflicting 
rights, and opposing duties and delicately divided interests which consti- 
tutes what we call civilized society. To' lead even the humblest and simplest 
through it in safety is a task for which hardly any training but that of an 
experience of life such as but very few men can boast, will prepare one. 
Nothing requires a higher order of talent and a more varied acquaintance 
with trials and temptations, than to make a sermon on the conduct of life 
strike an average business or professional man in our day 'right on the top of 
the head,' as we once heard a car-driver describe the way one of Moody's dis- 
courses affected him. No college course and no amount of reading can make 
up to the average preacher for not having seen and suffered much. Nothing 
can make up for it but genius, for genius has traveled in all lands and lived 



^84 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



in all ages, has wept beside the graves of a household and charged in the 
forlorn hope in the raw dawn of the winter's morning. But then genius 
is rare, and the coarse-fibred and ill-equipped man, when he seeks the means 
of keeping his congregation awake, and paying the church debt and the 
salaries of the choir, not unnaturally falls into the humorous and grotesque 
vein, which is almost always successful if pursued with a certain moderation 
at the outset 

A ORITIC'S GREEN SPEiCTAClLES. 

''Talmage, for instance, makes no attempt to conceal the fact that bouffe 
is his specialty. He defended himself one Sunday not long ago, against the 
charge of unseemly levity by showing that while other churches were, as he 
said, 'the great dormitories of civilization,' in his church nobody ever slept 
a wink. In fact he keeps the congregation in a roar or with a twinkle in 
their eye during the whole service. It is not very long since his invitation — 
let us sing a hymn'— brought out a shout of laughter, just as it would have 
done at the comic opera, owing to the queer collocation in which he pro- 
duced it. And yet no one can Hsten to his discourses or examine his mode 
of stimulating the religious sense without seeing that there is nothing new 
in his style; that what he has done is simply to go a little further than some 
others of his popular brethren, who also have been eminently successful in 
keeping their people awake. 

"The main ingredient of pulpit bouffe is, however, essentially the same 
as that of opera bouffe. It consists in the irreverent treatment of things 
which people have been in the habit of looking on with reverence. In the 
first stage of this the shock is too great for laughter ; but when people have 
become a little used to it, it supplies a kind of fun welcomed by those 
strictly brought up. In the opera bouffe the humor lies in a kind of reversal 
of the moral order of society. A cowardly colonel who runs away in the 
field is at once promoted and decorated. A defaulting banker is made State 
treasurer. The king's privy councillors, grave and elderly men, go out of 
the royal presence dancing a jig. In the pulpit in like manner there are 
two essential features in the bouffe method. The first is the presentation 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE. 



285 



of the Deity as governing the universe justly, but still, on the humorous plan 
• — that is, convicting the sinner by getting the better of him — or in other 
words, being too smart for him. In fact, the sinner usually appears in the ser- 
mons of the School as a person who suffers for his simplicity, and generally 
cuts a ludicrous figure when his wickedness is brought to light. The second 
is an appeal to the risibility which always lies concealed in decayed rever- 
ence. When there has been a distinct decHne in a man's capacity for awe, 
his sense of the comical is always touched by seeing the old objects of his 
worship treated with a good-humored disrespect and famiHarity. People 
who have received a religious education, but who have fallen away from, 
their early teaching, are therefore apt to be much tickled by a slightly comic 
handling of what they once held sacred. The sweetness of laughter of the 
irreverent religious man at the attempts of his pastor to make the Gospel 
entertaining to him and present the wicked in the light of greenhorns. Tlie 
fatal defect in the plan is that to keep it effective a steady broadening of 
the humor is necessary. The jokes have to become day by day more palpable 
and the colors to be laid on more deeply as the congregation's sense of de- 
corum declines, and its appetite for amusement grows dull. The result is 
that a preacher of the Talmage school is condemned by the law of his method 
to continued progress towards the extreme. If he once begins to make 
points in order to send a smile round the pews, he cannot stop till his flock 
begins to watch for jokes in his prayers or greets him now and then in his 
sermon with the regular theatrical roar." 

We believe that we have shown by citations from the words of Talmage 
'that the writer of this opera bouffe article did not know what he was talking 
about. Talmage did not, like many clergymen, discard the great power of 
humor in reaching the hearts of men. Neither, for that matter, did Shakes- 
peare or Chaucer or the other great masters of smiles and tears who play on all 
the emotions of men. What we have seen with our own eyes — the smile and 
the tear at the same time on the same face among the auditors of Talmage — 
shows that there was far more there of power over the human heart than 
the green-spectacled critic could see or feel. The simple people felt it and 



286 



THE TRIAL OF TALMAGE, 



their collective judgment we believe to be truer than the carping of an 
over-educated brain and under-nourished heart such as the writer of the 
bouffe article betrays. The passage of Talmagean humor, pathos and poetry 
which we have quoted in this book show that before ever Talmage saw 
"the Smile of the Sea," or stood on a steamer's deck, or passed to Palestine, 
he, if any one, ''had traveled in all lands and lived in all ages, had wept 
beside the graves of a household, and charged in the forlorn hope in the 
raw dawn of the winter's morning." 



i 



CHAPTER XVI 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 

TALMAGE BECOMES A STAR ON LECTURE PLATFORM TAKEN TO ENGLAND 

UNDER THE MANAGEMENT OF MAJOR J. B. POND OVERWHELMINGLY 

WELCOMED BY THE ENGLISH PEOPLE HIS MANAGER SWAMPED WITH 

REQUESTS FOR DATES ESTIMATE OF THE PEOPLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 

Dr. Talmage entered the lecture field in Philadelphia in i860. From his 
first appearance he was in demand as a platform orator. His keen observa- 
tion, natural aptitude to understand and depict human nature, his enthusiasm 
for his subject and his wealth of strong Anglo-Saxon words made him an ideal 
figure on the platform. His fame grew with every appearance until in 1879, 
he was paid from $400 to $600 for a .lecture and could fill as much time as 
he wished. In fact, he was forced to decline far more of these engagements 
than he accepted. He had a keen appreciation of the worth of money, but 
he never allowed any offer no matter how tempting to interfere with his 
duties as a preacher. He managed to fill about fifty engagements every 
year, which netted him a nice income and enabled him to speak personally 
to hundreds of thousands of admirers in America whom he could have 
met in no other way. During the various seasons of his lecturing days he 
probably visited every city and town of importance in this country, and at 
all of them he was most enthusiastically received. 

Managers were glad to make terms with an attraction that was so certain 
to be profitable. His lectures were prepared with great care and with an 
eye to teaching Christianity and the helpful virtues. These and many of 
his sermons were reprinted in London by the Christian Herald and Signs of 
the Times, a weekly religious periodical having an immense circulation 
among the middle and lower classes of Great Britain. In this way he be- 
came known to almost as large a congregation on that side of the water as 

287 



288 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN, 



on this, and when in June, 1879, Major Pond suggested to him a lecturing 
tour through Great Britain he accepted with the hope that he might add 
to the worth of his work and at the same time become famiHar with that 
historic ground. Major Pond in his admirable volume Eccentricities of 
Genius had a graphic account of this tour, which follows in part : 

WITH DR. POND. 

It is rather a one-sided, but interesting light on the character of Dr. Tal- 
mage, this article by Major Pond, the noted manager of lecturers, and his 
rather hysterical confessions that Dr. Talmage got the better of their financial 
arrangements occasioned considerable amusement among the friends of both 
parties. The chapter of Major Pond's book devoted to Dr. Talmage is, in 
part, as follows: 

"One morning in early June of 1879 I was passmg a news stand in front 
of the Astor House in New York, and was attracted to a small placard which 
read: 'Christian Herald and Signs of the Times. Only authorized publica- 
tion of the Rev. Dr. Talmage's sermons.' I bought the paper and read 
the attractive headHnes and an editorial by its editor, describing the popu- 
larity of Dr. Talmage as a preacher and his influence on the religion of 
Great Britain. I called on Dr. Talmage and found him ready to listen to 
a proposition to go abroad. He had never crossed the ocean, but had heard 
that his sermons were extensively published abroad. In fact, the last mail 
had brought him a letter from the general secretary of the Y. M. C. A. at 
Leeds, asking him to deHver ten lectures in the larger cities of England, 
Ireland, and Scotland, for his passage and ten pounds a lecture. The doc- 
tor asked me to write a proposition and to call in the morning. I wrote as 
follows : 

" 'Rev. T. De Witt Talmage. 

" 'Dear Sir: I will give you $10,000 for 100 lectures in Great Britain 
this summer, paying all the traveling expenses for yourself and Mrs. Tal- 
mage from the time you sail from America until you return; settlement to 
be made weekly. Yours truly, J. B. POND.' 

"The following morning I called again and he read me a letter which 
he had prepared: 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN, 



289 



" 7. B. Pond. 

" 'Dear Sir: I will deliver 100 lectures for you in Great Britain, begin- 
ning within three weeks, for $100 a lecture, you paying the expenses of 
myself, wife and daughter from the time we sail until we return. 

" 'T. DE WITT TALMAGE.' 

MAJOR POND GOES TO LONDON". 

"The next morning found me on board the City of Berlin, bound for 
England for the first time. Upon my arrival at Westminster Palace Plotel, 
in London, I found several gentlemen waiting to see me. They were the 
editors of religious papers who wanted to secure privileges during the lec- 
tures to be given under my direction. I secured $500 from one man for 
the exclusive right to paste advertisements of his paper on the benches in 
the halls where Dr. Talmage was to lecture. From another I secured £100 
for the exclusive right to publish Dr. and Mrs. Talmage's pictures. 

"The afternoon I arrived in London the editor of the Christian Herald 
brought me a paper, fresh from the press, with the announcement that I was 
to manage Dr. Talmage. Mr. Thorn, general secretary of the Y. M. C. A. 
at Leeds, wanted the first ten lectures in Great Britain, and offered me £20 
each for them. He said this was the highest fee ever paid for a lecture in 
that country. He asked time to wait upon his associates at Exeter Hall. 
Upon his return he offered me £50 each for ten lectures to be delivered at 
Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds, Edin- 
burgh, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Bradford, and Sheffield. I closed the contract, 
fixing the first date in Nottingham, June 18. 

"At 8:30 o'clock the next morning, as I was eating breakfast, I was ap- 
proached by an attendant of the hotel, who said : 

" The post has just brought your letters; where shall I take them, sir?' 

" 'Bring them to me here.' 

" 'But I can't. There are several baskets full.' 

DELUGED WITH APPLICATIONS FOR LECTURES. 

"I accompanied the fellow to the office, and there found between 400 and 
500 letters from every part of Ireland, England, and Scotland, and many 



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telegrams. All were seeking to secure Rev. Dr. Talmage for a lecture. I 
felt certain that the doctor had no idea of his popularity over there. In 
addition to the letters, callers flocked in and filled the lobbies of the hotel, 
waiting answers to their cards. I could not see half of them. With the 
aid of secretaries and a map, I was soon able to see I could easily fill 500 
lecture engagements. I repHed to the smaller cities that no proposition to 
lecture would be considered under £100, and to the larger cities, like Lon- 
don, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, etc., that £300 would be 
required. I received acceptances of propositions to Dublin and Belfast for 
£200, and to Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol for £300. Many corre- 
spondents were so anxious to secure contracts that they sent checks by re- 
turn mail. In some instances checks were sent back to me a second time 
with the assurance that I was held to produce Dr. Talmage, or would have 
the law appHed to force me. Such a scramble for an attraction I had never 
dreamed of before. 

''While the mail was piling up, I accepted an invitation for Dr. Talmage 
to preach in the Islington Presbyterian Church, Colebrooke road, Beside- 
the- Angel. He was to have £10 for that. 

GIVEN- WARM WELCOMEi 

'T met Dr. and Mrs. Talmage and Miss Jessie Talmage in London safe 
and well, but very tired. He said he had had a narrow escape with his life; 
that as soon as the steamer arrived in Queenstown great delegations rushed 
aboard the boat and down to his stateroom, shouting 'Welcome, Tal- 
m-o-d-g-e.' (They all gave the broad sound of 'o' to the middle 'a' of his 
name.) 'Welcome, welcome. God bless you. God bless Mrs. Talmage. 
God bless Miss Talmage. Where is the doctor?' 

"And, rushing into the stateroom, they got hold of Mrs. Talmage's arm, 
she being in the lower berth, and nearly jerked it out of its socket. They 
got hold of the doctor before they got through, and pulled him out of his 
room and shook hands with him, shouting, 'Welcome! God bless you!' 
all day on the steamer and on the cars to London. I did not see Dr. Tal- 
mxage the next morning, as he was preparing his sermon for the afternoon. 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN, 



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We drove to Islington Church, seeing a hillside black with thousands of 
people as we drew near. Soon we were surrounded by an impassable mob, 
which shouted incessantly, 'Talm-o-d-g-e. God bless Talm-o-d-g-e!' and 
rushed for us. Some jumped on to the carriage and got hold of his hands 
and succeeded in keeping them. One succeeded in tearing ofT Talmage's 
coat-tail, shouting, 'I want this for a souvenir!' Then they unhooked the 
horses and hauled the divine through a great jam of humanity and amid 
uproars and noises which Niagara could hardly have drowned. Finally, the 
preacher was lifted bodily and carried over the heads of the mob and thrust 
into the packed church. I was compelled to wait outside in the carriage 
until the ceremony was over. What took place can best be inferred from 
the following item, which appeared in the London Daily News of the fol- 
lowing day: 

'The public announcement that the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage of 
Brooklyn, U. S., was to preach, attracted yesterday evening a large number 
of persons to the outside at least of the Islington Presbyterian Church. The 
seat-holders and a few others having tickets were enabled to get in side- 
ways, filling all the seats fully two hours before the service commenced. 
Thousands of persons either went away altogether or remained to take their 
chances among the pubHc rush at a quarter past 6, the services commencing 
at half past. The church then quickly became crammed, amid cries and 
shrieks here and there for help in consequence of the pressure, and a few 
windows had be be broken to increase the ventilation. Many persons were 
injured.' 

CORDIAL, BUT BOISTEROUS. 

"The same performance was gone through with after the ser^^ce, except 
that the horses were hitched up. The crowd followed for at least half a 
mile, shouting praises for Talmage' as we drove away. The doctor was 
very tired. At dinner both he and Mrs. Talmage could talk of nothing but. 
this 'overwhelmingly cordial greeting to an American minister.' 'Major, 
did you ever hear of such a greeting to a minister?' Dr. Talmage asked me, 
and I certainly never had. 



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LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN, 



" This is going to be awful; how can I ever live through a succession of 
ovations like that/ he said. 

" 'De Witt, you can never endure it,' said Mrs. Talmage. 

''That evening Dr. Talmage and I had our first private business talk. 
'How much am I to get out of it?' he asked. 'You get your $ioo a night 
and your expenses,' I repHed; 'isn't that our contract?' 'Oh, I can't do 
that,' he said, 'it would be the ruination of my health-; and you would be 
getting rich and I would have nothing. I can't stand it and must give the 
whole thing up unless I can have at least $250 a lecture.' 'That's all I get 
for the first ten lectures,' I said, 'and by that time we don't know whether 
they will be worth any more. I am ready to do the fair thing, and will 
certainly make no new contract until I see whether the one we have is any 
good.' 'Very well,' he said, 'stop it all; I will take Mrs. Talmage and Jessie 
and go to Paris and get rest, which I need and must have.' 

"Thus we sat on the steps of Westminster Abbey until 2 o'clock Monday 
morning, and the doctor was booked to lecture at Nottingham that night. 
When we separated he asked me what hour he had better start for Notting- 
ham if he went. I said 9:30. 'I'll see you at breakfast at 8 and tell you 
finally,' he said. 

"As we sat down to breakfast the doctor handed me a note. It read: 
'Pay me $200 a lecture and my expenses (not those of my family), and I 
will go on for 100 lectures. Put this note in your pocket.' I read and re- 
plied: 'All right. Dr. Talmage, I accept. Mrs. Talmage, do you know 
about this?' 'Yes, Major Pond,' she said, 'and I'm so glad you and Dr. Tal- 
mage have come to an agreement.' 

FILLED THE HOUSE. 

"At Nottingham I learned that the people had filled the house early 
that afternoon, and that no others could get in. The crowd was ready for 
Dr. Talmage to go on at any time. When he went to the hall there were 
thousands of the same human strata which had been seen on Sunday, wait- 
ing to set eyes on Dr. Talmage, and they were enthusiastic to the verge of 
insanity, The policy had protected ^ back entrance, sq that the speaker, 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



293 



chairman and mayor could get in. I proceeded to London and began book- 
ing the remainder of the engagements. One night I received a telegram 
from Talmage telling me to stop everything. It was from Birmingham. I 
told him to finish the Manchester lecture the next night, and that I would 
meet him there. I arrived at Manchester about 5 p. m. In passing the 
city hall and public buildings I observed crowds of thousands and thousands 
of people, and asked my cabby what they were out to see. He said a Yankee 
minister by the name of Talm-o-d-g-e was to lecture there that night, and the 
people were trying to see him and get seats in the hall where he was 
to appear. The crowd was not noisy, but simply made a dash for the door of 
the hall, burst open the door, and crammed in. Every now and then I could 
hear some one say, 1 will see Talm-o-d-ge.' 

"Dr. Talmage saw me after the lecture. There was very little ceremony. 
He struck right out from the shoulder. It was business. 'You have got to 
pay me $350 a lecture or I go home,' he said. T cannot stand this tre- 
mendous succession of ovations.' I told him if he could do it for $350 he 
could do it for the price we agreed upon in London. 'I am killing myself 
and making you or somebody else rich,' he declared, 'and I get nothing for it. 
Say yes or no.' He was positive, but good natured. I said: 'Dr. Talmage, 
I am getting $250 each for this series of ten lectures, as you know. I am 
not making a fortune. I will give you your $250 each for 100 lectures, no 
more.' Finally he said, 'Well, that's the best you can do, is it?' 'Yes, sir, 
and if you do this, I will hire an EngHsh lawyer to draw up papers that will 
hold.' 'All right,' he said, 'make your contract and I will sign it.' 

CB.OWDS WERE IMME3TSE. 

"This had been a long siege. We went together to Liverpool, Glasgow, 
and other cities in Scotland, and such crowds! The tenth lecture of the 
tour concluded by contract with the Leeds Y. M. C. A., at $250 a lecture. 
On them I had made nothing, but during the time I had booked the bal- 
ance of the lectures, ninety in number, at a very handsome profit, the lowest 
fee being £80 and the highest £250. His final lecture- in England was sold in 
Liverpool to the Y. M. C. A. for £400. The Leeds Y. M. C. A. made $5,000 



294 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



on the series of ten lectures, or $500 profit on each lecture. At the low 
prices paid for admission in England, is, 2s 6d, to 3s 6d, it can be seen 
the crowds must have been enormous. 

"Dr. Talmage's lecture on The Bright Side of Things' had provoked 
laughter when many had expected sacred things. I feared a reaction, for 
in all the crowds I heard expressions of bitter disappointment. When we 
arrived back in London I found there was quite a feeling against Dr. Tal- 
mage on account of the questionable verdict of his ecclesiastical trial by the 
New York Presbytery. But business began to decline from this time on. 
It was difficult in many instances to collect the guarantee. Several causes 
led to the revulsion of feeHng and the depreciation of the doctor's value. 
Chief among these was the disappointment in his religious zeal. The re- 
ligious lower classes had pictured him as the man of God. With his mar- 
velous insight into the human heart of the nineteenth century he had, 
through his sermons, touched chords beyond the reach of any other man of 
his time. He had shown that he knew the burdens, the temptations, the 
bitterness of the life of men and women who gain their daily bread only by 
a struggle. With this master key he had unlocked their hearts, and they 
sought his presence very much in the same spirit that the multitude followed 
Christ into the wilderness. 

MARVELOUS SCENES. 

*T believe I witnessed marvelous, unmatched scenes in old England that 
summer. Such tribute as was laid at Talmage's feet was never paid to any 
other religious leader, and when these people came to find the lectures more 
of a secular, not religious, character, their disappointment knew no bounds. 
His final lecture in Liverpool was a dismal failure. Four responsible men 
had signed the contract for $2,000. I settled for $500, and if Dr. Talmage 
had not refunded that amount to the Y. M. C. A. committee I beUeve he 
would have been mobbed. But he had made the feeling. If he had only 
emulated his own teachings instead of using an old American lyceum lec- 
ture, he might have had a triumphant home-coming, instead of the one he 
did have, but he seemed to disregard in every way the wishes of the people 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN, 



295 



who paid to see and hear him. The result to the management was the loss 
of time. Dr. Talmage got all that was made on the tour, $17,500. In- 
stead of 100 lectures, he delivered seventy." 

The publication of this article by Major Pond created quite a discussion, 
but people generally laughed at the great manager of lecture attractions 
because he complained of having let a simple minister of the gospel get the 
better of him. When one of Talmage's friends spoke of the story the doctor 
replied : 

"Yes, a contract is a contract, but circumstances alter cases. Major Pond 
is a good fellow%" That closed the criticism as far as Talmage was con- 
cerned and the incident was soon forgotten in his growing popularity. The 
fact was that Dr. Talmage preached and lectured ninety-six times in ninety 
days on this tour, besides writing a series of articles descriptive of England, 
Scotland, Ireland and Wales. His power for work is marvelous and the 
small fortune of $300,000 that he left at his death is a small worldly recom- 
pense for the immense amount of his literary work. Men have recently made 
that much on a very badly-written and altogether wholly misconceived "his- 
torical" novel. 

Dr. Talmage not only delivered the lectures recounted here, but he 
preached several times in the leading churches of Great Britain. On June 
15 he preached his first sermon in London. It was delivered in the Presby- 
terian Church, Colebrook Row, Islington. An English newspaper, describ- 
ing the scene, says: "The members of the congregation and their friends 
who had obtained tickets of admission, entered at the side door. At 6:15 
p. m., notwithstanding the crowded state of the church, the front doors, 
at which considerable clamor had for some time been heard, were thrown 
open, and part of the large crowd which had by that time assembled, rushed 
in. Notwithstanding the edifice was full to overflowing, the crowd con- 
tinued to press forward into the aisles and the galleries. Immediately began 
a scene of confusion and uproar, which, we think it is safe to assert, has 
never been seen in this church before, and amid cries of 'Crush!' 'Crush!' 
'No room! no room!' 'We cannot move here!' Dr. Davidson ascended the 
pulpit and appealed to the people for quiet. Having given out the hymn, 



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'Jesus shall reign where'er the sun/ Dr. Davidson said of Dr. Talmage: 
'His inexhaustible originality, his fearless plainness of speech, and his un- 
matched pictorial power, have not only got around him the largest congrega- 
tion in America, but have secured in all parts of the world, from week to week 
through the press, his hundreds of thousands of interested and profited 
hearers.' " 

After the sermon Dr. Talmage went through the basement and out of 
the back door so as to get to his carriage, unobserved; but no sooner did he 
step into the carriage, than the people gathered around and thousands shook 
hands, and as the driver attempted to start, the people lifted the carriage 
by the wheels, and it was necessary for the police to clear the way. 

POPULARITY IN LIVEBPOOL. 

Dr. Talmage preached in Liverpool on September 14, taking for his 
subject. Was It Sea- Worthy? The Liverpool Protestant Standard says 
of the occasion: "The scene which presented itself in Hengler's Circus 
last Sunday evening was one never to be forgotten while memory lasts. 
From floor to ceiling, every available spot of that vast building was crowded 
for well-nigh an hour before the time appointed for the commencement of 
the service, and thousands on thousands had again to be refused admit- 
tance for lack of room. Full well is it known to the eternal wealth of tens 
of thousands of irnmortal souls who have been brought to Christ through 
hearing Dr. Talmage preach, or by reading his sermons in the Protestant 
Standard and other journals, that the doctor has received his message direct 
from his Master, 'Christ,' and in the spirit of his Master he goes forth to 
tell it, his heart yearning with love for the salvation of souls." 

In St. Enoch's Presbyterian Church of Belfast, Ireland, Thursday, Sep- 
tember 18, 1879, at 12 o'clock noon, Dr. Talmage delivered a sermon from 
the thought Is the Bible Right? Clergymen from many of the cities of Ire- 
land were present. The streets, as well as the great church were thronged. 
Dr. Talmage stood in the carriage and shook hands till exhausted, then went 
to the railroad station to take the train for Dublin, and meet his last engage- 
ment before sailing for America the next day, having delivered ninety-six 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



297, 



addresses in ninety-four days, most of the addresses two hours or nearly two 
hours long. 

ESSAYS ON GREAT BRITAXN". 

What good use Dr. Talniage made of his eyes while on this tour can 
best be understood by reading his essay on Great Britain Through Amer- 
ican Spectacles. These impressions were penned on the spot and have all 
the freshness and charm of spontaneous composition. He begins by saying 
that he wishes to forewarn his readers that after the continued ovations ac- 
corded him he cannot help but look at things from a partial standpoint, and 
that at any moment his heart may run away with his head. "Whatever 
other kind of ink I use in these sketches," he says, "I will not use blue. If 
I cannot find anything but blue ink I will not write at all. Rather than that, 
I would even prefer red ink, for that is the color of the morning. I would 
not be offended if I am charged with writing with ink verdant or green, for 
that is a ver^^ respectable color, being the same as the palm-leaf, and the 
rushes, and some parts of the deep sea. I shall paint with the cheeriest 
color I can find in the studio. If I find a tear I will hold it up till in the 
light it becomes a globule of melted sunshine. 

''England and Scotland have already treated me so magnificently that I 
am in a mood to be pleased with everything. Shaking hands every day 
with thousands of people in halls and churches, and at railway stations, till 
my right hand is disabled and fit only for a sHng, because of the stout grips, 
accompanied by emphatic 'God bless you,' I am swamped for the work of 
harsh criticism. 

"I tell you at the start, I like England, her landscapes, her cities, her 
government, her common people, and her aristocracy. But I do not w^ant 
to live on the same street with them in heaven. They will always be singing 
out of tune, and searclfing for fractures in the amethyst, and finding fault 
with the country. Give them a world to themselves where they can have 
an eternity of pouting, a sky full of drizzle-drozzle, an owl in each tree to 
hoot away the hours, and a kennel of snarling rat terriers to nip the robe 
of every angelic intruder. 



298 



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''After eight days in the GalHa, that queen of Cunarders, we swing into 
the harbor of Queenstown. It is night, and rockets shot up from the stern 
of the ship invite the pilot boat and the steam tug to come out to meet us. 

''SEA HAS ITS BACK UP." 

'The sea has its 'back up/ and the pilot boat makes a dash for our 
steamer, and misses it; another dash, and misses it again. Then we see the 
blue and red lights of the tug boat coming out as much as to say, 'I will 
show you how to catch a steamer!' aims at it, but crosses in front of our 
prow; aims at it again, but falls behind our stern. We stand on deck in 
the sopping rain to watch this aquatic game, until wearied we retire to our 
room for slumber. As we are falling to sleep, there is a sudden charge of 
stout men into our private apartment. 

"What is the matter now? Have the old-time pirates resuscitated their 
business, and are we to be seized and made to walk the plank? By the dim 
light from the Hall I see the three men by mistake putting out their hands 
toward the berth in which sleeps the better half of us. As I look down from 
the upper berth I hear loud voices saying, 'Welcome to England.' By 
delegation London, Leeds, and Dublin have looked in upon us. I respond 
in my shirt sleeves, but I am so surprised at the sudden incursion that the , 
response is not worthy of the occasion, and amounts only to a sudden ejacu- 
lation of 'Where did you come from!' 

"That scene was only a forerunner of the cordiality and generosity of 
these people of Great Britain toward strangers. Like Americans, they 
have been much lied about. They are warm-hearted and genial to the last 
degree. Their homes, their carriages, their hearts, are all wide open. We 
have not found what Americans call the 'grouty Englishman.' His digestion 
is better than that of the American, and hence he can afford to be better 
natured. If a man has to wrestle with a lamb chop three hours after swal- 
lowing it, his good humor is exhausted. The contest in his body leaves 
him no strength for the battle with the world. Foreign wars are not so 
destructive as internal. When things sour on a man's stomach they make 
him sour with all the world. Some of us need not more a 'new heart' 
according to the Gospel than a 'new liver' according to physiology. 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



299 



"This season of all others tests an Englishman's spirits. It is unprece- 
dented for rainy weather, and in some of the churches prayers had been 
offered for a cessation of moisture. We have been in England thirty days, 
and it has rained some time every day, but this makes us appreciate the 
sun better when it does come out. The clouds, like a veil to a beautiful face, 
add to the attractiveness by only occasionally being withdrawn. When 
the sun in summer shines from morning till night with intense glare we 
always feel that he is rather overdoing the business. 

BEAUTY OF THE CLOUDS, 

''There is nothing more exquisite than a cloud when it is richly edged 
and irradiated. A cloudless sky is a bare wall. A sky hung with clouds in 
all stages of illumination is a Louvre and Luxembourg. Clouds are pictures 
drawn in water colors. 

"Who knows but that Raphael and Rubens, gone up higher, may some- 
times come out and help in the coloring of the canvas of the morning with 
brush of sunbeam, putting within sight of our eyes the constellated glories 
belonging to the other side of the Border. 

''Now, if in the shadowed weather of this summer Englishmen can be so 
genial, I would like to know how they are in the usual summer brightness. 
It is a delusion that Englishmen delight to grumble. As near as I can judge, 
each community appoints some one to do the grumbHng for it, and he be- 
comes the champion grumbler. 

"One pulpit will do all the grumbling for all the pulpits in the town; 
one newspaper all the grumbling for the journalists; one prominent citizen 
the grumbling for all the citizens. Such an one becomes the pet growler 
of the community. All the scandal-mongers carry to him forage. They 
feed him with all the disagreeable things of the community. His capacity 
for offal is awful. They rub him down with the ragged edge of a slander. 
Job describes this wild ass of the forest as snuffing up the east wind. Like 
others of his kind he eats thistles. These champion growlers of English 
communities do all that kind of work, leaving others nothing to do but to 
be agreeable. Delightful arrangement! Let us transfer it to America, and 



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have the fault-finding in church and state done by committee. Take the 
most powerful 'bear' out of Wall Street and let him do the croaking for 
all the brokers. Take some ecclesiastic, who has swallowed his religion 
crosswise and got it stranglingly fast in his wind-pipe, to hunt down all the 
heresy, real or fancied. Get some one newspaper to do all the work of maul- 
ing reputations, exposing domestic infelicities and reporting divorce cases. 
Let one female 'gad about,' gathering all the gossip, put it up in bottles 
properly labeled and peddle it about from house to house in small vials for 
those who could stand only a little, or in large bottles, as it may be required. 
Let her be known as the championess of tittle-tattle. So men and women 
might delegate to one or more the disagreeables of the world. And, as at 
different times America and England have disputed with each other for 
supremacy with oar, and bat, and rifle, let the champion American growler 
go forth to dispute with the champion EngHsh growler for the belt of the 
world. Let the day chosen for the contest be a commingling of Scotch mist 
and English cloudiness and American drizzle. 

AMEHICA AND ENGLAND. 

"Let them go at each other with threats and annoyances and recrimina- 
tions. Let all fault-finders the world over stand round the ring watching 
the fate of the two nations. The Englishman might draw the first blood, 
but the American will prove a full match for him at the last. The struggle 
may be long and fearful, and the excitement surpass that of Creedmoor 
shooting and Ascot and Derby races, but I think neither would gain the 
victory. Indeed, I would like to see them both go down together in the 
contest and both slain. Then would perish from the earth the bickerings 
and the suspicions, the snarlings and the backbitings of the world. 

"Bury the two champions in the same grave, their clubs with them, cov- 
ering them up with a bank of nettles. Read for their funeral service the 
report of the stock market just after some great failure. Plant at the head 
of it a little nightshade, and at the foot of it a little nux vomica. For epi- 
taph: 'Here lies complaint and hypercriticism. Born in the year i; died 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



301 



in the year 1885. May the resurrection trumpet, that blows others up into 
the light, blow these miscreants deeper down into oblivion.' 

''Speaking of championship reminds me of our American Hanlan's vic- 
tory at Newcastle-on-Tyne, by which he carries for our country the honor 
of being the world's greatest rower. I regretted that I could not accept the 
invitation to go to Manchester last week and distribute the prizes. 

"I HONOR MUSCLE." 

"I honor muscle. As the world's heart improves, the world's arm will 
grow stronger. In the millennium, what oars we will paddle, what crickets 
we will play, what wrestlers we will throw. We are told in that day there 
are to be 'bells on the horses,' and that means music and innocent gayety, 
and sleigh rides, and swift teams, and liveliness, and good cheer, and tin- 
tinnabulation. 

"That there is betting at these athletic contests we deplore, but we 
cannot stop healthful amusements because people bet on them. There are 
men who bet on everything. Every time the log was thrown from the stern 
of the Gallia, there were wagers lost and won. Passengers bet about which 
foot in the morning the captain would first put out of the door of his office, 
the right or the left foot. Betting about the kind of soup we should have 
for dinner. Betting about the hour of our arrival at Queenstown. But 
all this betting is no reason why we should not take steamers across the 
Atlantic. 

"For the cause of civiHzation, we will capture the world's oars, and bats, 
and chess-boards, and rifles. We want sanctified brawn. When the animals 
passed Adam in Eden to get their names, they did not dare even to growl 
at that first athlete. Had he been like unto a modern specimen of weak 
delicacy, instead of his naming them, they might have swallowed him up, 
giving him their own name of lion or bear. 

"We want more Samsons; not to carry off gates, but to hang new ones; 
not to set foxes' tails on fire, but to put the torch to the world's shams; not 
to pull down pillars, but to build temples of righteousness; not to slay Philis- 
tines with the jaw bone of an a§s, but to kill the ass of the world's stupidity 
and inanition. 



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'While the schools go on to build the head of the coming man, and 
the church goes on to build his heart, let our out-door recreations go on 
to build his body. If that be the coming man, the sooner he comes the 
better 

HOW ENGLAND LOOKS FROM THE BOTTOM. 

' 'We all know something of how England looks on the upper side, but 
we always had a desire to get under it and look up. So we accepted an invi- 
tation to plunge into one of her coal mines, near Sheffield. With the ladies 
of our party we are at the top of the Nunnery Colliery. We have no pleas- 
ant anticipations of the descent into the great depths of the earth. V/ e put 
on caps and overcoats as protection from the blackness of the coal. Each 
one is armed with a small lantern. After taking a long breath, in case we 
should not very soon get another opportunity, we step into what might be 
called a rough elevator, but which is called 'a cage.' We stand in the center 
and throw our arms over a bar and hold fast. ■ The sides of the cage are 
not tightly inclosed, and the only door at the entrance on either side is the 
body of the guide, who stands there to keep the passengers in their place 
in case of panic. 

'We are to drop six hundred and sixty feet. About the capacity of the 
machinery to drop us we have no doubt, but the question is about the sud- 
den halt at the bottom of the mine. With steam-power we are lowered, 
only one rope of steel at the top of the cage deciding whether the three 
of my party and our two guides shall stop at the foot of the shaft or go on 
to a landing place in the next world. 

'' 'All right?' asked the man standing on the outside of the cage, with 
upward inflection of voice. 

" 'All right,' answered one of the guides, with downward inflection. We 
had suggested to an attendant that we were in no hurry to get to the bottom, 
and that there were several trains of cars that could take us in time to our 
next engagement, and therefore we might as well be dropped a Httle more 
deliberately than usual. 

"But all that had no effect. The signal given, down we went. We had 
the sensation of being parted about the waistband. We had fallen from 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



303 



hay-mows in boyhood and from apple trees, and had been swung higher 
than we wanted to swing, but this was a compression of all those disagree- 
able feelings into one wrench of the ribs from the hip-bone. We were told 
it was only a minute, but it must have been a minute stretched six hundred 
and sixty feet long. 

''Arriving at the bottom we stepped into an arched room and stopped a 
few minutes to get our eyes and lungs used to the darkness and the atmos- 
phere. Then one guide ahead and one guide behind, and by the dim light 
of our lanterns we started through the long black corridors. Past us rushed 
trains of cars laden with coal. Further and further we went into the dark- 
ness that seemed the more appalling as it parted for a little at the touch of 
our hghts. Beams of wood keep up the roofs of coal, while the sides look 
as if any moment large masses might roll down. 

"This mine, after being worked twelve years, shows no signs of exhaus- 
tion. Seven hundred men are still plunging their crow-bars and pick-axes. 

'This is what does so much to make England great. This is a chilly 
world, and all nations must have coal. The Duke of Norfolk owns these 
mines, but all England feels the advantage of this indescribable weather hid- 
den in the cellars of the earth. 

"Talking with the miners, they all seem cheerful and unharmed by the 
eternal shadows in which so much of their lives are spent. They pass eight 
hours in the mine, and then have sixteen hours out. A stout, tall miner 
by the name of Henry Walters told us that he had been working in the mines 
forty-five years. There are few men toiling above ground who look as 
healthy as this man, for near half a century toihng under ground. 

"But it is a hard life anyhow you make it. Standing down here amid 
the foundations of the earth, the memories of colliery accidents at Blantyre, 
and Risca, and Hartley, come shuddering and groaning through the wilder- 
ness of underground night. It will take the stoutest and most resounding 
blast of archangeUc trumpet to fetch up the bodies of the miners from such 
entombment. 

"For four shillings a day, which of us would like this banishment from 
the sunshine? A sepulcher is not inviting, whether built out of coal or 



g04 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



limestone. Sitting and walking all day long in the light that bathes the 
streets and fields, or streams through our windows, do we realize sympathet- 
ically how many thousands of men spend their lives in the midnight, hewing 
more midnight from the sides of the caverns? 

"But how suggestive that out of these chunks of darkness that tumble to 
the miners' feet we secure warmth and light for our homes, and momentum 
for our steamships. The brightest light of this world we chip out of its 
darkness. Out of our own trials we get warmth of sympathy for others. 
Our past troubles are the black fuel which we heave into the furnace of future 
enterprises. As the miners cut the wealth of England out of the caverns, 
so we may hew out of the midnight caverns of misfortune the brightest 
treasures of character and usefulness. 

''But we must say good-bye to these underground workers. We get 
into the 'cage,' and prepare for ascent. The guides warn us that as we near 
the top, and the speed of the 'cage' is slackened, the sensation will be some- 
what distressing. 

"Sure enough! We get aboard, throw our arms over the iron bar with 
a stout hug; the signal of 'all ready' being given, we fly upward. Coming 
near the top, at the slackening speed, it seems as if the rope must have 
broken, and that we are dropping to the bottom of the mine. A few slight 
*'ohs,' and the delusion passes, and we are in the sunlight. Bless God 
for this heavenly mixture! There is nothing like it. No artifice can 
successfully imitate it. You need to spend a few hours deep down in an 
English mine to appreciate it. In the contrast it seems more mellow, more 
golden, more entrancing. You take off your hat and bathe in it. You 
feel that the world needs more of it. Sunshine for the body. Sunshine for 
the mind. Sunshine for the soul. Sunshine of earth. Sunshine of heaven. 

"In the words of the old philosopher, 'Stand out of my sunshine!' Look 
here! What do we want any more of these miners' lamps? They might 
as well be extinguished. Their faint flicker is absurd in the face of the 
noon-day. They were useful to show us where to tread among the seams 
of coal. They were good to light up the genial faces of the miners while we 
talked to them about their wages and their families. 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



305 



"Lamps are valuable in a mine. But blow them out, now that we stand 
under the chandelier which at twelve o'clock, at noon, hangs pendent from 
the frescoed dome of these blue English heavens. So all the tallow dips of 
earthly joy will be submerged when the old belfry of the next world strikes 
twelve for celestial noon. Departure^ from this world for the good will.be 
only getting out of the hard working mine of earthly fatigues into the ever- 
lasting radiance of Edenic mid-summer. Come now! Stop moralizing and 
drop that lantern of the coUieries. 

HATS OFF TO SACRED RUHTS. 

"We will take off our hats in the presence of this old ruin of Kirkstall 
A^bbey near Leeds. But what is the use of these Kirkstalls and Melroses 
and this everlasting round of abbeys and monasteries and ruined churches? 
Why are they of any more importance than any other heap of stones or 
bricks? Yoke the ox-team and ploAV them under. Take iconoclastic ham- 
mer, and say dust to dust. Graze the sheep and cattle among the dishon- 
ored fragments or among the demolished abbey at Meaux. Caricature Wal- 
ter Scott's paroxysm of admiration for moonlight on crumbling arch. 

"No! no! there is nothing that impresses us like these old ruined abbeys, 
and many of the occupied churches of to-day are not of so much use. What 
a perpetual and tremendous attestation of the better aspirations of the human 
race! They consider no arch too lofty, no tracery too exquisite, no archi- 
tecture too ponderous, or airy, or elaborate, or expensive, to express the 
meaning of the soul. In letters of eternal granite they wrote it, and in win- 
dows of undying masterpiece they pictured their longing for God and 
Heaven. 

"As we sit down at Kirkstall among the fragments of this ecclesiastical 
wreck, floated to us from the past centuries, we are overpowered with his- 
torical reminiscence, and the abbots of seven and eight hundred years ago 
come and sit down beside us. The summer air breathing through the de- 
serted sacristy, and interlaced scrolls, and silent nave and choir, and clustered 
piers makes us dreamy, and perhaps we see more than we could see if wide 
awake. 



m 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



''The columns bearing the wounds of centuries, as we look at them, heal 
into the health of their original proportion. By supernatural pulley the 
stones rise to their old places. The water of baptism sparkles again in the 
restored font. The color of the sunlight changing, I look up and see the 
pictured glass of the thirteenth century. Feeling something cool under 
my foot, lo, it is the ornamented tile restored from ages vanished. 

"I hear a shuffling, and all the aisles are full of the feet of the living of six 
hundred years ago, in one style of apparel, and the living of eight hundred 
years ago, and the living of five hundred years ago. And I hear a rumbling 
of voices, and lo, the monks of all the past are reciting their service. Here 
are Leonard Windress, and William Lufton, and John Shaw, and Richard 
Batson. And this is Archbishop Cranmer, come more to look after his 
property than to join in the religious ceremonies. And those two persons in 
the south transept are Queen Elizabeth and Peter Asheton, gentleman, to 
whom she is making over the Abbey. See these pale and nervous souls 
kneeling in the penitential cell crying over sins committed eight hundred 
years ago. On the buttress of that tower the two letters W and seem 
to call back William Marshall, the old abbot who ordered the inscription, 
and while we are talking with him and deprecate the folly of a man inscrib- 
ing his own name on a temple reared to the Almighty, a chime of bells, 
probably hung there in the fifteenth century, but long ago lost, yet re-hung 
to-day by invisible hands, ring out first a 'Wedding March' for all the mar- 
riages solemnized in that consecrated place, and then strike a dirge for all 
its burials; and, last of all, rousing themselves to sound the jubilee of all 
nations, calling to York Minster and St. Paul, and Salisbury, and all the dead 
abbeys of the past, and all the living cathedrals of the present, to celebrate 
the Millennium of the world's deliverance, and all the chapels, and sacristies, 
and choristers, and penitential cells respond Amen! Amen! And then a shaft 
of light broke through the arched window horizontally, and a shaft of light 
dropped perpendicularly, and crossed each other, but I noticed that the 
perpendicular shaft was longer than the horizontal shaft, and lo I and behold ! 
I saw that the old Monastery of Kirkstall was in attitude of worship crossing 
itself. 



LECTURES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



307 



AN ANCIENT LEGEND. 

"My guide-book at this point dropped from my hand and woke me, and 
I found a young artist on a ladder copying the sculptured adornments over 
the west doonvay. 

" 'What!' I said to myself, 'must the nineteenth century copy the twelfth?' 

"Even so. The highest and most enterprising art of our day cannot 
crowd past the windows and doors of eight hundred years ago. The ages 
move in a circle, and it may take the w^orld two thousand years before it 
can again do the ribbons and skeins of granite in York Minster or Kirkstall 
Monastery. While that artist hangs to the ladder, taking on his sketch-book 
the tracery of the doorway, he makes us think of the artist murderer who 
used to stand in that very place doing the same things — sketching the door- 
way and stealing the heart of a maiden. He was more desperado than 
artist. 

"By night, with a gang of outlaw^s, he played the highwayman. A citi- 
zen with a large sum of money, passing near the abbey, was robbed and 
murdered. Mary Clarkson, the maiden, w^as in the abbey one night, having 
wandered there with troubled mind. While there she saw a group of men 
carrying a corpse, which they came and buried in one part of the ruined 
abbey. The hat of one of the men blew oft and rolled to Mary Clarkson's 
feet, where she sat unobserved. It w^as found next day to be the hat of her 
lover whom she had as yet not suspected of evil. William Bedford was 
approaching the town to claim his bride; but the true character of the villain 
having been discovered the constable seized him, and Mary of the hat 
brought to the galloW'S the artist desperado. So, under one ancient crum- 
bling, transcendent doorway, meet devotion and crime, sin and virtue, the 
'^eavenly and the diabolical.'* 

I ■ 




CHAPTER XVII. 

THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 

SAILING UP THE TAY ^VISITS CHURCH AND GRAVE OF ROBERT MURRAY MC- 

CHEYNE FOR INSPIRATION BEAUTIFUL WOMEN OF SCOTLAND BEAU- 
TIFUL BANKS OF THE TAY SERMONS DRAWN FROM RUINED CASTLES 

UNPRONOUNCEABLE NAMES OF WALES. 

' "Pushed at the rate of sixty miles an hour into the capital of Scotland, 
and set down with the shriek of the steam- whistle — compared with which a 
sound of an American locomotive is a harpsichord — here we are. 

"The sensitive traveler will not sleep the first night in Edinburgh, and 
will do well if the second night he can be composed. The restlessness may 
not be ascribed to the lack of comfortable couch, for the art of bed-making 
has been carried to perfection here. You are not called, as in many an 
American hotel, to sleep on a promontory of mattresses, not certain on which 
side you may fall off into the sea. There are no lumps in the bed that take 
you in the middle of the back, or hardnesses in the pillow that make you dream 
like Jacob on the stones, barring out the ladder and the angels. The foot- 
board is not so near the head-board that the sleeper is all the night long 
reminded of his end. There are no stray points of feathers thrust through 
the linen to tickle you under the ribs. The covers do not come within just 
three inches of being large enough when you pull them up, making bare the 
foot, or when, by the grasp of the 'comfortable' between the large toe and the 
fatty portion of the foot, you pull them down, exposing the shoulder, so that 
you fancy, in your disturbed slumber, that you are perishing in a snowbank. 
But a broad, smooth, affluent couch, on which you may sublimely roll, reckless 
of covers, and confident that beyond the point at which you stop there is still 
further expanse of comfort and ease. 

"But the restlessness will be accounted for by the fact that in no city undef 

308 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES, 



309 



the sun is there so much to excite the memory and the imagination. It is a 
stimulant amounting to intoxication. We find gentlemen whose minds have 
been overworked in this city seeking mental quiet. As well go to Iceland 
to get warm, or to Borneo to get cool. The Past and the Present jostle each 
other. The shoulder of modern architecture is set against the arch of the 
twelfth century. Antiquity says, T will furnish the ideas,' and the Present 
says, 1 will freeze them into stone.' You take in with one glance The Abbey,' 
built by Roman Catholic David the First, which has for seven hundred years 
sat counting its beads of stone, and that modern structure. The Donaldson 
Hospital,' a palace of charity, crowned with twenty-four turrets, inviting to 
its blessing the poor children of the city, and launching then on the world 
every way equipped — knowledge in their heads, grace in their hearts, and 
money in their pockets. While in one part of the castle you are examining old 
*Mons Meg,' the big gun that burst in the time of James the Second, you hear 
from another part of the castle the merciless bang of Professor Smythe's time- 
gun, fired off by a wire reaching across the city from the Observatory. 

EDINBURGH AJSTD BOSTON COMPARED. 

"Edinburgh and Boston have each been called 'the modern Athens.' We 
shall not here decide between them. They are much alike in literary atmos- 
phere, but at the antipodes in some respects. In Boston, literature has a 
Unitarian tinge, in Edinburgh, a Presbyterian. In this Scotch capital, re- 
ligion, politics, science and literature are inextricably mixed. The late Sir 
James Y. Simpson, M. D., whose face is in all the photographic show-windows 
of the city and whose life was spent in surgery, recently made an address on 
^Dead in Trespasses and Sins/ and Doctor Brown, a practising physician on 
Rutledge Street, wrote of 'Paul's Thorn in the Flesh/ and the collection- 
boxes of the Scotland Bible Society are set in the railroad stations, and 
Reverend Doctor Arnot, last Sabbath, at the close of his sermon, turned 
around and bowed to the judges of the court seated in the gallery, and over 
a door in 'Lady Stair's Close' is the inscription. Tear the Lord and depart 
from evil.' In this city, acutest analysis could hardly tell where literature 
or politics ends or theology begins. But since the brain and the heart are 



310 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 

only about a foot and a half apart, I know not why there should be such effort 
to separate the intellectual from the spiritual. All frank and intense writers 
on secular themes have given us a glimpse of their higher faith. We know 
the theology of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Babington Macaulay and 
William C. Bryant as well as that of Jonathan Edwards and Archibald Alex- 
ander. There is no need that the literati of the world go dodging and skulking 
about pillars of St. Paul as though ashamed to be found there. ' 

''Reaching from Edinburgh Castle, throned on the rocks, down under the 
city to the Abbey of Holyrood, there is an underground passage six hundred 
years old. Queen Victoria, a few years since, offered a large reward to any 
man who would explore that passage. The poor fellow who undertook it 
choked to death in the damps and gases, and the Queen withdrew her induce- 
ment, lest some one else should perish in the undertaking. I would that the 
way between the castle of beauty and strength, and the abbey of religion in 
all ages, were not a dark tunnel difficult of exploration, but a brilliant cause- 
way, and that we all might walk there. 

''Let Science and Piety walk with hooked arms in the hall of the university, 
and ivy climb over the cathedral wall, and every church belfry be an observa- 
tory, and learning and goodness be so thoroughly intertwined and interlocked 
that every man shall be both philosopher and Christian. Then Galileo will 
not only see that 'the world moves,' but that it moves in the right direction, 
and the gowned professors of the academy and the surpliced officials of the 
chapel will unite their strength to shorten the distance between the castle and 
the abbey. 

NO NIGHT IN EDINBURGH. 

"At this summer season, Edinburgh sleeps under a very thin covering of 
shadows. There is no night there. At ten o'clock p. m. I walked up on 
Calton Hill, and saw the city by daylight. And the evening and the morning 
were the same day. The American is perplexed as to what time he ought to 
retire, and at four o'clock in the morning springs out of bed, feeling that he 
must have overslept, till he looks at his watch. The day and the night are 
here twin sisters — ^the one a blonde, the other a brunette. At this season, 
when tourists are most busy, the curtain does not fall on Edinburgh. 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



311 



"The city has been compressed into small compass, so that it might be 
under the defense of the guns of the castle. A house ten stories high is not 
an unusual thing. There -are no 'magnificent distances.' It is but two 
minutes' walk from the Netherbow to the Canongate. It is only ten minutes' 
ride from Holyrood to the Castle. In one short saunter you go from examin- 
ing the Scottish crown in the 'Jewel-room,' on the Hill, down to the museum, 
in. which you see the stool that Jenny Geddes threw at the head of the bishop. 

"The city has a superb belt of what the Scot has chosen to call 'hospitals.' 
They are not places where fractures are splintered or physical diseases as- 
saulted, but are educational institutions. Considering ignorance a horrible 
disease — the wasting away of a marasmus, the benumbing of a palsy, the 
sloughing off of a gangrene-public, charity has erected these 'hospitals' for 
the cure of intellectual malady. 

"A printer of the city gave one million fifty thousand dollars for the 
building and maintenance of one of these institutions, where two hundred 
and twenty poor children are taught. The structure is vast and imposing, 
battlemented and towered, and embossed in foliage and flowers — strength in 
the arms of beauty, without being shorn of any of its locks. 

"The John Watson's Hospital, the Orphan Hospital, the Gillespie Hospital, 
the Merchant Maiden Hospital, the George Heriot Hospital — the surplusage 
of bequests not yet employed, and seemingly not needed for structures of the 
same character — show how much the people hate darkness and love light. 
God gave to Edinburgh, as to Solomon, the choice of riches, honor, or wis- 
dom. She chose wisdom, and the riches and the honor have been thrown in 
as a bounty. While the antiquarian stands studying the grotesque gargoyles 
which frown and mow and run out the tongue from the venerable roofs and 
arches of the city, I see more to admire in the chubby faces of the children. 

MONUMENTS GENIUS. 

"But, while Edinburgh is preparing for a grand future, she is not willing 
that her dead should fall back into the shadows. With a tight grip of fingers 
in bronze and stone she holds on to the men of the past. She has for the last 
thirty years been building monuments, and she will keep on building them. 



312 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



As she denied the request of the Queen that Dr. Simpson be buried in West- 
minster Abbey, Edinburgh will not now put on the limits the sculptors who 
perpetuate him. Walter Scott alive, hobbling along the Grassmarket, made 
not so much impression on this city as to-day, looking down on Princess 
Street, from under a canopy of stone, one hundred and ninety feet high, the 
dog Bevis at his feet, while breaking out in sculpture on the sides are the 
'Last Minstrel,' and 'Lady of the Lake,' and Meg Merrilies, the queen of 
witches, with her long skinny arms seeming to marshal all the apparitions of 
ghostdom. 

''Here dwelt Alexander Smith, destroyed by his own mental activity, the 
fire of his genius consuming not only the sacrifice but the altar, and Hugh 
Miller, who with his stone chisel cut his way into the mysteries of the earth 
and the heart of nations, and Playfair, and Dugald Stewart, and Henry 
Mackenzie, and Doctor Blair, and Thomas de Quincy. Here Christopher 
North put on his 'sporting-jacket,' out of the pockets of which he pulled for 
many of us Windermere and the Highlands, his swarthy figure in bronze, now 
standing in the East Gardens, his hair looking like the toss of a lion's mane, 
his eye wild as a stormy night on the moors, his apparel as sloven as his 
morals. 

"But these men were of the past. The harvest of giants has been reaped. 
Edinburgh has but two or three men of world-wide fame remaining. Doctor 
John Brown, author of 'Rab and His Friends,' may still be found on Rutledge 
Street, but he has dropped his royal pen and has no more 'Spare Hours' for 
the reading public, now that he gives his entire time to his medical profession. 
If the dogs, whose greatest champion he is, knew that he had abandoned their 
cause, they would set up a universal howl, and the spirit of 'Rab' would come 
forth to haunt him, wagging before him that immortal stump of a tail. 
Though the Doctor has sent his do^s scampering through every American 
study, and through many a lady's parlor, he has no dog left. His last one, 
Kent by name, was so much in. danger of being contaminated by the more 
vulgar dogs of the city, that he was sent over to Ireland to be companion and 
defender to the Doctor's married daughter. A large portrait of 'Kent' hangs 
over the parlor mantle on Rutledge Street. You would not wonder that all 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 313 



Doctor Brown's dogs have been so kind and wise and good if you only knew 
their master. 

"It seems that in one case, at least, his plea for unhappy curs nas oeen 
effectual. Eleven years ago a poor and unknown man was buried in Gray 
Friars Churchyard. His dog, 'Bobby,' a Scotch terrier, was one of the 
mourners. Next day he was found lying on the grave, but as nothing but 
bronze or stone dogs are lawful in such places, Bobby was kicked out of the 
yard. The second morning he was found there, and was still more emphat- 
ically warned to give up his melancholy habits. But when, the third morning, 
he was found on the grave the old curator had compassion, and ever since the 
bereft creature has been taken care of. For years he was allowed steaks from 
an officer of the city. I wish that all the dogs that live on Government were 
as worthy." 

A DAY ON THE RIVER TAY. 

Dr. Talmage gives the following characteristic description of a day spent in 
the company of friends on the river Tay : 

"Seven o'clock in the morning at Dundee, looking out of window upon 
the River Tay, which is the Rhine of Scotland. When the Romans, many 
centuries ago, first caught sight of it they exclaimed, 'Ecce Tiber!' Within 
sight of scenery which Walter Scott made immortal in his Tair Maid of 
Perth.' The heather running up the hills to join the morning cloud of the 
same color, so that you can hardly tell which is heather, and which is cloud, 
beauty terrestrial and celestial, intertwined, interlocked, interspun, intermar- 
ried. The incense of a gentleman's garden burning toward heaven in the 
fires of the fresh fall, and fringed with ferns ; hawthorn in hedges which halt 
the eye only long enough to admire before it leaps over. At the end of each 
path a stately yew, trimmed up to the point like a spear, standing sentinel. 
The kennels under the wall yawning with terriers and fox-hounds. 

" Two dogs of black St. Hubert's breed, 
Unmatches for courage, breath and speed.' 

"The glades, the farmsteads, the copses, the soft plush of the grass, 
which has reveled in two months of uninterrupted moisture. Seated in an 



314 



THROUGH SCOTLAND ANR WALES, 



arm-chair that an ancient king might in vain have wished for, writing on 
a table that fairly writhes with serpents, and dragons, and gorgons, done in 
mahogany. What a time and place to take pen and paper for communica- 
tion with my American readers ! 

''Before I forget it I must tell you how I baptized a Scotch baby down in 
the center of England. It was about ten o'clock at night, at the close of a 
lecture, and in the private parlor of a hotel that a rap was heard at the door. 
Word came in that a young man was there desiring me to officiate at a bap- 
tism. We thought that there must be some mistake about it. and so delayed 
making our appearance. 

A HURRIED BAPTISM. 

"About five minutes before the starting of the rail train we came to the 
door of the private parlor and confronted a young man in a high state of 
excitement. He said that he had come all the way from Scotland to have us 
baptize his child. We told him the thing was impossible for the train would 
go in five minutes. But this only made the man more intense. So we said, 
'Where is the baby? We have no time to wait.' The young man rushed 
down stairs and returned with the mother and child. As she unrolled the boy 
from her plaid there came to sight the prophecy of a genuine Roderick Dhu. 
We wanted an hour to baptize a boy like that. 

"Scotch all over! What cheek bones and what a fist. Give him plenty 
of porridge, and the air of Loch Vennachar, and what a man he will make — 
Chief of Clan Alpine ! I asked the mother what she was going to call him, 
and she said, 'Douglass!' What a name! What a name! Suggestive of 
victory, defeat, warrior blades, and gates of Stirling Castle 

" 'Ere Douglasses to ruin driven. 

Were exiled from their native Heaven !' 

"But it was no time to indulge in Scottish reminiscences. If that infant 
Highlander was to be baptized by us it must be within the next sixty sec- 
onds. We had the father and mother, and the baby and the minister, but no 
water ! 

"We hastily scanned all the vases and cups in the room. There was no 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



315 



liquid in all the place save the cocoa left over from our evening repast. That 
would not do. We have known people so stupid, and dull, and bilious all 
their lives you might imagine they had been baptized in cocoa. But we 
would have no part in such a ceremony. 

" *Get some water in a second !' we demanded. From the next room the 
anxious father returned in a moment, bringing a glass of it, clear, bright 
water, fit to christen a Douglass, opaline as though just dipped by Rob Roy 
from Loch Katrine. 'Douglass!' we called him as the water flashed upon 
the lad's forehead quick and bright as the gleam of Fitz- James' blade at In- 
verlochy. We had no time for making out a formal certificate, but only the 
words, /Baptism, July 21st,' the name of Douglass, and our own. 

"As we darted for the cars, the young man submerged us with thanks, 
and put in our hands as a baptismal gift the 'Life of Robert McCheyne,' the 
glorious Scotchman who preached himself to death at thirty years of age, but 
whose brave and godly words are still resounding clear as a pibroch among 
the Scotch hills. 

"As we had but little time to pray at the baptism we now ejaculate the 
wish that the subject unrolled that night from the smiling Scotch mother's 
plaid may have the courage of a John Knox, the romance of a Walter Scott, 
the naturalness of the Ettrick Shepherd, the self-sacrifice of a High McKail, 
the physical strength of a Robert McCheyne. In other words, may he be 
the quintessence of all great Scotchmen. 

THRILLEJ) BY SCOTCH CHARACTER. 

"There is something about the Scotch character, whether I meet it in 
New York, or London, or Perth, that thrills me through and through. Per- 
haps it may be because I have such a strong tide of Scotch blood in my own 
arteries. Next to my own beloved country give me Scotland for residence 
and grave. The people are in such downright earnest. There is such a roar 
in their mirth, like a tempest in 'The Trossacks.' 

"Take a Glasgow audience and a speaker must have his feet well planted 
on the platform or he will be overmastered by the sympathy of the populace. 
They are not ashamed to cry, with their broad palms wiping away the tears, 



316 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



and they make no attempt at suppression of glee. They do not simper, or 
snicker, or chuckle. Throw a joke into a Scotchman's ear and it rolls down 
to the center of his diaphragm and then spreads out both ways, toward foot 
and brow, until the emotion becomes volcanic, and from the longest hair on 
the crown of the head to the tip end of the nail on the big toe there is paroxysm 
of cachinnation. 

"No half and half about the Scotch character. What he hates, he hates ; 
what he likes, he likes. And he lets you know it right away. He goes in for 
Lord Beaconsfield or William E. Gladstone, and is altogether Liberal or 
Tory. His politics decided, his religion decided; get him right, and he is 
magnificently right ; get him wrong, and he is awfully wrong. 

"A Scotchman seldom changes. By the time he has fairly landed on his 
feet in this world he has made up his mind, and he keeps it made up. If he 
dislikes a fiddle in church you cannot smuggle it in under the name of a bass 
viol. 

"We like persistence. Life is so short that a man cannot afford very often 
to change his mi'nd. If the Israelites in the wilderness had had a few Scotch 
leaders, instead of wandering about for forty years, they would, in three 
weeks, have got to the promised land, or somewhere else just as decided. 

NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS FADING AWAY. 

"But national characteristics are gradually giving way. The Tweed is 
drying up. The Atlantic Ocean under steam pressure is becoming a Fulton. 
Ferry. When I asked John Bright the other day if he was ever coming to 
America, he said: 'No; America comes to me!' 

"Besides that, American breadstuffs and American meat must have its 
effect on European character. All careful observers know that what men eat 
mightily affects their character. The missionary among the Indians, com- 
pelled to live on animal food, gets some of the nature of the aborigines, 
whether he will or not. 

"The Anchor Line of steamers coming to Glasgow bring great cargoes of 
American meat to Scotland. The meat of animals butchered in America is 
kept on steamers in a cool draught especially arranged for that purpose, and 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES, 



317 



the meat market of Scotland is being revolutionized. The Scotchman eating 
American beef and American mutton and American venison becomes partially 
American. Englishmen on platforms and in the newspapers deplore the com- 
ing in of so much American breadstu£fs. Because of the failure of English 
crops for two or three years this is becoming more and more so. 

'The Englishman eating American wheat and American rye and Ameri- 
can corn must become in part Americanized. And here is an element of 
safety which political economists would do well to recognize. The cereals 
and the meats of one nation becoming the food of other nations, it prophesies 
assimilation and brotherhood. 

"It will be very difficult for American beef to fight American beef, and 
American mutton to fight American mutton, and American corn to fight 
American corn, though it may be found on the opposite side of the Atlantic. 

''The world is gradually sitting down at one table, and the bread will be 
made of Michigan wheat, and it will be cut with Sheffield knives. The rice 
will be brought from Carolina swamps, and cooked with Newcastle coal, and 
set on the table in Burslem pottery, while the air comes through the window 
upholstered with Nottingham lace. And Italy will provide the raisins, and 
Brazil the nuts, and all nations add their part to the universal festivity. What 
a time of accord when all the world breakfasts and dines and sups together. 

THE HIGHLAND SHOW. 

"What is that neighing of horses, and bleating of sheep, and barking of 
dogs now coming to my ears ? It is the Highland Show. The best animals 
of Scotland are in convention a little distance away. Earls and marquises 
yesterday judged between them. 

"Better keep your American cattle, and horses, and sheep, and dOgs at 
home, unless you want them cast into the shade. What a spectacle! I sup- 
pose these are the kind of cattle and horses that made up the chief stock in 
Paradise, before they had been abused of the wicked centuries. 

"Examine those which have won distinction and a ribbon : Rear Admiral, 
Knickerbocker, Prince Alfred and Harold, from Berwick-on-Tweed, among 
the shorthorns;, Liddesdale and Lord Walter among the Galloways; The 



318 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



Monarch among the polled Angus cattle; Morning Star, King Carthus and 
Scottish Chief among the Ayrshires. This is the poetry of beef; the Iliad,' 
the 'Odyssey,' the Taradise Regained,' of cattledom. Pass on to the horses, 
and see Conqueror and Luck's All, and Star of the West. 

"St. John saw in vision white horses, and bay horses, and black horses, 
and one might think that some of these in the Highland Show had broken 
out bf the pasture-fields of heaven. One of these might well have stood for 
Job's photograph, 'his neck clothed with thunder.' What hunters and road- 
sters! 

"Pass on to the sheep and see the wonderful specimens of Cheviots and 
Dinmonts, some of them so covered with wealthy fleece they can hardly see 
out, nature having 'pulled the wool over their eyes.' 

"Pass on and stir up these fowls, and hear them crow and cackle and 
cluck. Turkey gobblers, with unbounded resources of strut, and ducks, of 
unlimited quack, and bantams, full of small fight, and Cochin-Chinas, and 
Brahmapootras, and Hamburgs, and Dorkings, suggesting the grand possi- 
bilities of the world's farm-yard. 

"And dogs ! I cannot stop to describe the bewitching beauty of the English 
and Gordon setters, and Dalmatians and retrievers, and pointers, and Scotch 
terriers, Skye and rat, and that beautiful joke of a dog — the English pug — 
which I can never see without bursting into laughter, and the collies now 
becoming the fashionable dogs of Europe, their heads patted by lords and 
ladies. How I would like to bring to America a whole kennel of them. St. 
John, in Revelations, put the dogs on the outside of the gate of heaven, say- 
ing : 'Without are dogs !' 

"If he could have seen these of the Highland Show he would have invited 
them in. I think they might at least lie down under the king's table. 

BEAUTY OP THE TAY. 

"We have sailed on the Rhine, the Thames, the Hudson, the St. John, but 
cut out of all the other days of our life for entrancement is this day when on 
the steamer Star o' Gowrie, we sail the Tay. Somewhat may depend on our 
especial mood. 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



319 



We had passed the night and previous day in one of those castles of 
beauty, a Scotch gentleman's home, a place that led us to ask the owner, as 
we stood in the doorway : 

" 'Do you suppose heaven will be much brighter than this ?' 

"He said, 'Yes! for there will be no sorrow there.' 

"Then we thought can it be possible that sorrow ever looked out of these 
windows commanding such landscape, or ever set foot amid these royal flower- 
beds, or rode up this kingly carriage-way? 

"We had visited the church of Robert Murray McCheyne, stood in his 
pulpit, hoping to get some of his inspiration, halted by his grave, and thought 
how from that comparatively small church (there are twenty larger churches 
in New York and Brooklyn) there has gone out a celestial spell upon all Chris- 
tendom. I said to some of those who knew him well : 

" 'Was he really as good as the books say he was?' The unanimous 
answer was^ 'Yes, yes.' His was goodness set to music, and twined into 
rhythm. 

"The goodness of some people is rough and spiked, and we wish they were 
less good and more genial. But McCheyne grew pleasant in proportion as he 
grew holy. And there are his old church and his unprententious grave a 
charm for the centuries. 

"We had also passed under the gate on which Wishart stood and preached 
to the people outside the wall during the plague, and from the text, 'He sent 
His word and healed them;' an assassin with dagger drawn waiting to stab 
him when he came down, the murderous intention defeated by Wishart's 
putting his hand on his shoulder affectionately ; and when the excited populace 
rushed on to destroy the assassin, were hindered by Wishart's defense of the 
desperado, as the clergyman said, 'He who slays this man will first have to 
slay me.' 

"We have been at the table with and heard the post-prandial talk of Dun- 
dee's clergymen, bankers, and literati. We have been in the parlors with 
the beautiful women of Scotland — the high color of the cheek, the purity of 
their complexion, the elegance of their manners, the brilliancy of their repartee, 
and the religious fervor of their conversation making up an attractiveness 



320 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES, 



peculiar to their nationality. There are no brighter homes on earth than in 
Scotland. 

"In the mood which all these scenes had induced we stepped on board the 
Star o' Gowrie for a sail on the Tay. Whether we did not pay it sufficient 
deference by tipping our hat to it as we started, or what was the reason, we 
will not guess ; but the wind lifted our hat for us, and away it went into the 
Tay, never to be recovered, and would have left us in an awkward plight, 
for people only laugh at a man who has lost his hat, but we happened to have 
a surplus, and so were immediately refitted. 

"We passed under the Tay Bridge, the longest bridge across a tidal river 
in the world; but the whole heaven that day was an arch bridge, but tressed 
with broken storm-cloud, mighty enough to let all the armies of Heaven cross 
over, and indeed it seemed as if they were crossing — ^plumes of cloud, and 
wheels of cloud, and horses of cloud, troop after troop, battalion after bat- 
talion. 

HEAVENS ON PARADE. 

"There are some days when the heavens seem to turn out on parade. But 
there is no danger that this suspension-bridge from horizon to horizon will 
break, for if here and there a crystal should shiver under celestial foot, the 
cavalcades are winged, and the fracture of sapphire would be repaired by one 
stroke of the trow^el of sunshine. 

"The banks of the Tay seem laved with a supernatural richness. The 
verdure and foliage seem to have dripped off heights celestial. The hills on 
either side run down to pay obeisance to the queenly river, and then run up to 
the sky to report they have done so. Abbeys and castles stand on either shore, 
telling of the devotions and the courage of dead centuries. If you had time 
to stop and mount one of the casements of Elcho Castle, that old ruin on the 
south bank of the Tay, and should call the roll of the heroes departed, Bruce 
and Wallace, and Thomas de Longueville, calling loud enough, you might in 
the echoes hear the neighing of the war chargers, the clash of claymores, and 
the battle cry of Clan Chattan responded to by Clan Inhele, and all the other 
clans. 



THROUGH, SCOTLAND AND WALES, 321 



"'Bold and true 
In bonnet blue/ 

"On this side the Tay is the ruin of Lindore's Abbey, with its great stone 
coffins, about the contents of which generations have been surmising, and 
about which Dean Stanley remarked one day to a friend — that, considering 
the size of the coffins, the people occupying them must have been broad 
churchmen. 

INTEREST IN OLD CASTLES. 

"And yonder is the ruin of Balnabreich Castle. A few straggling stones 
only tell the place which once was the retreat of the mighty. Near by it the 
battlefield of Black Ironside, and the stream where Wallace and his thirsty 
men found refreshment. 

" 'Drank first himself, and said in sober mood, 
The wine of France I ne'er thought half so good.' 

"But say some — 'we have no interest in these old castles and abbeys.' 

"That displays your own ignorance. We notice that people who have no 
interest in such places are unacquainted with history, and no wonder to them 
Kenilworth Castle is of less interest than a fallen down smoke-house. Alas 
for those who feel no thrill amid these scenes of decayed architecture. Such 
ruins are the places where the past ages come and sit beside us, show us their 
leathern doublet, bend their keen-tempered blade, sing us the old songs, and 
halting the centuries in their solemn march bid them turn round and for a 
little while march the other way. 

"We are apt to think, while looking upon these old ruins of barbaric 
times, how much the world has advanced. Yes, but not in all things for the 
better. Is our century which drops a bombshell able to kill twenty men any 
better than the century with falchion that killed one man ? Are Waterloo and 
Sedan with their tens of thousands of slain better than the North Inch at 
Perth, near which we are now landing in this Scotch afternoon, the North 
Inch where thirty men of one clan, and thirty men of another clan, picked 
from their nation as champions, fought, until all were slain, or wounded, or 
dishonored, or drowned in the Tay? 



322 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



"Is murder on an immense scale better than murder on a small scale? 
Was Napoleon despoiling nations so much better than Robin Hood despoiling 
a wayfarer ? Is Sin Brobdignagian more admirable than Sin Liliputian ? Is 
Springfield Armory better in God's sight than Balnabreich Castle ? But before 
we get the questions answered our steamer touches the wharf, and we dis- 
embark with a farewell to the beautiful Tay, which seems to answer, as we 
part : 

" 'Men may come and men may go, 
But I go on forever, 
I go on forever, 
I go on forever/ 

THE THREE ARISTOCRACIES. 

"We Republicans and Democrats in America have been brought up on 
the theory that the aristocracy of England and Scotland live a fictitious and 
stilted life in aim, and meaningless. My own ideas on the subject have been 
reconstructed by my present visit. There are in the world three kinds of aris- 
tocracy — the aristocracy of wealth, the aristocracy of birth, the aristocracy of 
goodness. The last w411 yet come to the ascendency, and men will be judged, 
not according to the number of dollars they have gathered, nor the fame of 
their ancestors. But if w^e must choose between the aristocracy of wealth 
and the aristocracy of birth, we choose the latter. We find that those who 
have been born to high position wear their honors with more ease and less 
ostentation than those who come suddenly upon distinguished place. 

"The man with a stable of fifty horses and a kennel of fifty hounds may 
be as humble as the man who goes afoot and has no dog to follow him. So 
far as we have this summer seen the homes and habits of the aristocracy of 
England, we find them plain in their manners, highly cultured as to their 
minds, and many of them intensely Christian in their feelings. 

"There is more strut and pretension of manner in many an American con- 
stable, or alderman, or legislator, than you will find in the halls and castles of 
the lords and earls of England. One great reason for this is that a man born 
to great position in Great Britain is not afraid of losing it. He got it from 
his father, and his father from his grandfather, and after the present occupant 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



323 



is done with his estate, his child will get it and then his grandchild and so on 
perpetually. 

''It is the man who has had distinguished place only two or three years 
and may lose it to-morrow, who is especially anxious to impress you with his 
exaltation. His reign is so short he wants to make the most of it. 

''Even the men who come up from the masses in England to political 
power are more like to keep it than in America, for the member of the House 
of Commons may represent any part of England that desires to compliment 
his services instead of being compelled to contest with twenty small men in 
his own district, as in America. It makes no difference to John Bright 
whether Birmingham wants to send him to Parliament or not. 

"There are plenty of counties that do want to send him. Some of the 
most unpretentious men of England are the most highly honored. Gladstone 
is not afraid of losing his honors while with coat off he swings his ax 
against the forest trees at Hawarden, near Chester. His genteel visitors may, 
with gilt-edged book in hand, prefer to recline among geraniums and haw- 
thorns of this country residence, but as Mr. Gladstone has so much during 
session of Parliament to do in the way of chopping at the present administra- 
tion, and hacking and hewing at political antagonists, during recess while 
at Hawarden Castle he keeps his hand in by cutting down trees. 

GLADSTONE'S FEARLESS CHARACTER. 

"In a picnic of working people assembled on his lawn one summer day, 
Mr. Gladstone, while making a little speech, said : 

" 'We are very proud of our trees and are therefore getting anxious as the 
beech has already shown symptoms of decay. We set great store by our 
trees.' 

" 'Why, then,' shouted one of his rough hearers, 'do you cut them down 
as you do?' 

" 'We cut down that v/e may improve. We remove rottenness that we 
may restore health by letting in air and light. As a good Liberal you ought 
to understand that.' 

"So Mr. Gladstone, though holding the strongest political pen in England, 



324 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



is easily accessible, and is not afraid of being contaminated by contact with 
inferiors. 

"A citizen of Rochdale, in reply to my question about Mr. Bright, said: 
*We do not know Mr. Bright ! He is John Bright.' 

"Indeed from my delightful interview with this eloquent and magnetic 
Englishman I could understand this familiarity with his name. His genial 
and transcendent nature looking at you through the blue eyes, and speaking 
from the fine head, now white as the blossoms of the almond tree, and without 
any reserve putting himself into familiar conversations on all the great ques- 
tions of the day, you easily see how, while the masses shout at his appearance 
on the platform, the Queen of England sends word that when he approaches 
her he may, according to his Quaker habits and belief, keep his hat on. 

"This unostentation seen among those who have done their own climbing, 
is true also of those who are at the top without climbing at all. 

"The Marquis of Townshend, who presided at our lecture at the Crystal 
Palace, has the simplicity of a child, and meeting him among other men you 
would not suspect either his wealth or his honors. 

"The Earl of Shaftesbury is like a good old grandfather from whom it 
requires no art to evoke either a tear or a laugh. 

"The family of Lord Cairns, the highest legal authority in England, is 
like any other Christian home which has high art and culture to adorn it. 

"Among the pleasantest and most unaffected of people are duchesses and 
Vight honorable' ladies. The most completely gospelized man we have met 
this summer was the Earl of Kintore. Seated at his table he said : 'Do not 
forget our journey next Sabbath night.' 

"It was useless to tell us not to forget that which we had so ardently 
anticipated. At six o'clock his lordship called at the Westminster Palace Ho- 
tel, not with carriage, for we were going where it was best for us to go afoot. 
With his servant to carry his coat and Bible and psalm-book we sauntered 
forth. 

"We were out to see some of the evening and midnight charities of 
London. First of all we went into the charity lodging-houses of London, 
the places where outcast men who would otherwise have to lodge on the 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



325 



banks of the Thames or under the arch bridges may come in and find gratui- 
tous shelter. 

"These men, as we went in, sat around in all stages of poverty and wretch- 
edness. As soon as the earl entered they all knew him. 

"With some he shook hands, which in some cases was a big undertaking. 
It is pleasant to shake hands, with the clean, but a trial to shake hands with 
the untidy. Lord Kintore did not stop to see whether these men had attended 
to proper ablution. 

"They were in sin and trouble, and needed help, and that was enough to 
invoke all his sympathies. He addressed them as 'gentlemen' in a short 
religious address and promised them a treat 'about Christmas,' telling them 
how many pounds he would send ; and accommodating himself to their capac- 
ity, he said, 'it would be a regular blow out.' 

"He told me that he had no faith in trying to do their souls good unless 
he sympathized practically with their physical necessities. His address was 
earnest, helpful and looked toward two worlds — ^this and the next. In mid- 
summer a large fire was burning in the grate. Turning to those forlorn 
wretches. Lord Kintore said: 'That is a splendid fire. I don't believe they 
have a better fire than that in Buckingham Palace.' 

"From this charity lodging-house, which the inmates call the 'House of 
Lords,' we went to one of inferior quality, which the inmates call the 'House 
of Commons.' There were different grades of squalor, different degrees of 
rags, different stages of malodor. 

MISSIONS AND OUTDOOR MEETINGS. 

"From there we went to missions, and outdoor meetings, and benevolent 
rooms, where coffee and chocolate are crowding out ale and spirits. Ready 
with prayer and exhortation himself, his lordship expected everybody with 
him to be ready, and, although he had promised to do the talking himself, he 
had a sudden and irresistible way of tumbling others into religious addresses ; 
so that, at the close of this Sunday, which we had set apart for entire quiet, 
we found we had made five addresses. 

"But it was one of the most refreshing and instructive days of all our 



326 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



lives. As we parted that night on the streets of London, I felt I had been 
with one of the best men of the age. 

"While the Duke of Beaufort is shooting pheasants in the copse at Bad- 
minton, and is distinguished for Southdown sheep, and a cabinet set with 
gems that cost £50,000, and an estate of incalculable value, most men will 
have more admiration for such dukes and lords and noblemen as are cele- 
brated for what they are doing for the betterment of the world's condition. 
Lord Congleton, missionary to Bagdad before he got his title, but now making 
himself felt as oriental scholar and religious teacher ; Lord Cavan the stirring 
evangelist; Lord Radstock, not ashamed to carry the gospel to the Russian 
nobility, and Lord Kintore, who is always ready to take platform or pulpit, 
when there is anything good to be done, or walk through the haunts of desti- 
tution and crime, for temporal and spiritual rescue. 

"I write this at the Deanery of Canon Wilberforce, the son of Bishop Wil- 
ber force, who, by the fall of a horse in 1873, lost his life while riding with 
Lord Granville. Our host is also the grandson of Wilberforce, the Christian 
statesman and philanthropist, honored for all time. 

"So in England there are whole generations on the right side. While for 
pretention and hereditary sham we wish a speedy overthrow. 

"We pray God for the welfare and continuance of a self-sacrificing, intel- 
ligent, virtuous and Christian aristocracy. 

UNPRONOUNCEABLE NAMES OF WALES. 

"We have been in the land of unpronounceable names, and for the first 
time in our life seen a Welsh audience. They are the most genial and hearty 
of all people. When they laugh they laugh, when they cry they cry, and when 
they cheer they cheer, and there is no half-way work about it. 

"Their language is said to be only second in sweetness and rhythm, but the 
English tongue seems to be crowding it out. The melody of the Welsh 
vernacular we must, however, take on faith. We give our readers an oppor- 
tunity of practicing the music of the names of some of the Welsh valleys, 
such as Llangollen, Maentwrog and Ystwyth ; of some of the Welsh medicinal 
springs, such as Llanwrtyd, Trefriw and Llandrindod; of some of the Welsh 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES, 



327 



mountains, such as Pencwmcefwyn and Aanfawddwy. If you are at all puz- 
zled with the pronunciation of these names, you will please get one of the 
Welsh dictionaries, entitled : 'Dymchweliad allor uchel y Pab/ And if then 
you cannot succeed you will perhaps stop, and be as ignorant as I am of a 
language which the Welsh say has in it capacities for tenderness, and nice 
shades of meaning, and pathos, and thunderings of power beside which our 
English is insipid. 

^'Within a comparatively few years the English Government has found 
Wales to be her most valuable treasure house. She has the largest coal fields 
in Europe, and in vertical thickness the strata surpass the world. Her iron, 
and lead, and copper, and zinc, and silver, and gold, must yet command the 
attention of all nations. Her minerals, unlike those of most countries, are 
within fifteen or twenty miles of the sea, and easily transported. 

''Considering the fact that the language is spoken by less than a million 
people, the literature of the Welsh is incomparable for extent. 

'The first book was published in 1531, and consisted of twenty-one leaves. 
Four years after, another book. Eleven years after, another book which they 
strangely called 'The Bible,' containing the alphabet, an almanac, the Ten 
Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and something about 
their national games. 

"An astounding 'Bible' that was. Eighteen years after this another book 
appeared. The slow advancement was because the prominent men of the 
English nation wanted the Welsh language to die out, on the supposition that 
these people would be more loyal to the throne if they all spoke the English 
language. But, afterward, the printing press of Wales got into full swing, 
and now books and periodicals by the hundreds of thousands of copies are 
printed and circulated in the Welsh language. But, excepting a few ballads 
of an immoral nature, corrupt literature dies as soon as it touches this region. 

DEATH TO BAD NOVELS. 

"Many bad English novels that blight other countries cannot live a month 
in the pure atmosphere of these mountains. The fact is, that the Welsh are 
an intensely religious people, and one of their foremost men declares that in all 
their literature there is not one book atheistic or infidel 



328 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



"The grandest pulpit eloquence of the centuries has sounded through these 
gorges. I asked an intelligent Welsh lady if there were any people living who 
remembered the great Welsh divine, Christian Evans. She replied, 'Yes! I 
remember him — that is, I remember the excitement. I was a child in church, 
and sat in a pew, and could not see him for the crowd, but the scene made on 
me an indelible impression.' 

"For consecrated fire, the Welsh preachers are the most effective in the 
world. 

"Taken all in all, there are no people in Europe that more favorably im- 
press me than the Welsh. 

"The namby pamby traveler, afraid of getting his shoes tarnished, and 
who loves to shake hands with the tips of the fingers, and desires conversation 
in a whisper, would be disgusted with Wales. But they who have nothing 
of the fastidious in their temperaments, and who admire strength of voice, 
strength of arm, strength of purpose, and strength of character, will find 
among the Welsh illimitable entertainment. 

MADMAN A COAOH. 

"On my way from Wales I met with one of the most exciting scenes I ever 
witnessed. We were in a rail train going at a terrific velocity. There are 
two or three locomotives in England celebrated for speed; one they call the 
Flying Dutchman, another they call the Yorkshire Devil. We were flying 
ahead at about sixty miles the hour. There were five of us, four gentlemen 
and a lady, in an English car, which is a different thing, as most people know, 
from an American car, the former holding comfortably only about eight per- 
sons, four of them may occupy one seat, facing four on the other seat. We 
halted at the 'station,' as they say in England, or at the 'depot,' as we say in 
America. A gentleman came to the door and stood a moment, as if not 
knowing whether to come in or stay out. The conductor compelling him to 
decide immediately, he got in. He was finely gloved, and every way well 
dressed. 

"Seated, he took out his knife and began the attempt of splitting a sheet 
of paper edgewise, and at this sat intensely engaged for perhaps an houn 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



329 



The suspicion of all in the car was aroused in regard to him, when suddenly 
he arose, and looked around at his fellow-passengers, and the fact was re- 
vealed by his eye and manner that he was a maniac. The lady in the car (she 
was traveling unaccompanied) became frenzied with fright, and rushed to the 
door as if about to jump out. Planting m.y foot against the door, I made this 
death-leap impossible. A look of horror was on all the faces, and the ques- 
tion with each was, 'What will the madman do next?' 

''A madman unarmed is alarming, but a madman with an open knife is 
terrific. In the demoniac strength that comes to such an one he might make 
sad havoc in that flying rail-train, or he might spring out of the door as once 
or twice he attempted. It was a question between retaining the foaming fury 
in our company, or letting him dash his life out on the rocks. 

"So it might be a question between his life and the life of one or more in 
the train. Our own safety said, 'Let him go!' Our humanity said, 'Keep 
him back from instant death !' and humanity triumphed. The bell-rope reach- 
ing to the locomotive in the English rail-trains is on the outside of the car, and 
near the roof, and difficult to reach. I gave it two or three stout pulls, but 
there was no slackening of speed. Another passenger repeated the attempt 
without getting any recognition. We might as well have tried to stop a whirl- 
wind by pulling a boy's kite-string. 

"When an English engineer starts his train he stops for nothing short of 
a collision, and the bell-rope along the outside edges of the car is only to make 
passengers feel comfortable at the idea that they can stop the train if they 
want to, and as it is not once in a thousand times any one is willing to risk his 
arm and reach out of the window long enough to work the rope, the delusion 
is seldom broken. To rid ourselves of our ghostly associate seemed impos- 
sible. 

"Then there came a struggle as to who should have the supremacy of that 
car, right reason or dementia. The demoniac moved around the car as though 
it belonged to him, and all the rest of us were intruders. Then he dropped 
in convulsions across the lap of one of the passengers. 

"At this moment, when we thought the horror had climacterated the trag- 
edy was intensified. We plunged into the midnight darkness of one of those 



330 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



long tunnels for which English railway travel is celebrated. The minutes 
seemed hours. Can you imagine a worse position than to be fastened in a 
railway carriage eight feet by six, in a tunnel of complete darkness, with a 
maniac ? May the occurrence never be repeated ! We knew not what moment 
he might dash upon us or in what way. 

'We waited for the light, and waited while the hair lifted upon the scalp, 
and the blood ran cold. When at last the light looked in through the windows 
we found the afflicted man lying almost helpless. When the train halted he 
was carried out, and we changed carriages, for we did not want to be in the 
place where such a revolting scene had been enacted. 

"Thank God for healthful possession of the mental faculties. For that 
great blessing how little appreciation we have. From cradle to grave we 
move on under this light, not realizing how easy it would be to have it snuffed 
out. 

PITY FOR THE INSANE. 

"God pity the insane. For all who have been wrecked on that barren 
coast, let our deepest sympathies be awakened. Nothing more powerfully 
stirred the heart of the 'Man of sorrow,' than the demoniac of Gadara, and 
what relief when the devil came out of him and the desperate patient, who had 
cut himself among the tombs, sat clothed and in his right mind. 

"Until that encounter in the mail train we were in doubt as to whether we 
preferred English or American railroading, as each has its advantages. But 
since then we cast our vote in favor of American travel. We cannot equal 
the English in speed. Their tracks are more solidly built, and hence greater 
velocity is possible without peril. But the arrangements for 'baggage' as 
we say, or 'luggage' as they say, is far inferior. No getting of a trunk 
checked for five hundred or a thousand miles without again having to look at 
it. Nothing to show for your baggage, and only a label put on the lid an- 
nouncing its destination ; you are almost sure to lose it unless at every change 
of cars you go out and supervise the transportation. Beside that it is impos- 
sible to stop the train, however great the necessity. A prolonged scene like 
that which I have just now sketched in an American railway would have been 
an impossibility. What though occasionally a weak man may impose on the 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



331 



convenient bell-rope and stop the train without sufficient cause, there ought to 
be a certain and immediate way of halting a train in case of such a wild, ap- 
palling and tremendous exigency. 

WORDS ENGLISH AND AMERICAN. 

"It is well for every one crossing the ocean to know beforehand the differ- 
ence between the use of certain words in England and America. 

"The American says 'depot,' the Englishman says 'station.' The American 
says 'ticket office,' the Englishman say 'booking office.' The American says 
'baggage,' the Englishman says 'luggage.' The American says ' I guess,' the 
Englishman says 'I fancy.' The American says 'crackers,' the Englishman 
says 'biscuit.' The American says 'checkers,' the Englishman says 'draughts.' 
The American says 'yeast,' the Englishman says 'barm.' The American calls 
the close of the meal 'dessert,' the Englishman calls it 'sweets.' The American 
says 'sexton,' the Englishman says 'doorkeeper.' The American uses the word 
'clever' to describe geniality and kindness, the Englishman uses the word 
'clever' to describe sharpness and talent. 

"There are many more differences, but as education advances and inter- 
communication between England and America becomes still more frequent, 
there will be only one tongue, and all words will mean the same on this and 
the other side of the Atlantic. 

ENGLISH WATERING PLACES. 

"I have this summer seen much of the EngHsh watering places. They are 
now in full tide, September in this respect corresponding with our August. 
Brighton is like Long Branch. Weymouth is like Cape May. Scarborough 
is like Saratoga. Isle of Wight is like heaven. 

"Brighton being within an hour and a half of London, the great masses 
pour out to its beach, and take a dip in the sea. But Scarborough is the place 
where the high prices shut out those of slender purse. It combines more of 
natural and artificial beauty than any place I ever saw. It is built on terraces. 
Its gardens rise in galleries. Two great arms of land reach out into the sea, 
and hundreds of gay sailing craft float in. A castle seven hundred years old 
straggles its ruins out to the very precipice. 



332 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



"The air is tonic and the spectacle bewitching. Lords, and ladies, and 
gentry come here for a few weeks. The place is cool in summer, and warm 
in winter. In December, the thermometer hovers about the fifties, and the 
people breakfast with open windows, while others are skating at London. 

''Of all the summer watering-places we have ever seen, in some respects 
Scarborough is the most brilliant, and is appropriately called the 'Queen of 
English Resorts.' But the prices are enormous, and not many could meet 
them. Brighton is best known to American theologians as the scene of the 
late Frederick Robertson's ministry. 

"We attended his little church, which would hold perhaps six or eight 
hundred people, but from whose pulpit he preached after death to thousands 
of clergymen in Europe and America, those strange, powerful, original and 
melancholy sermons. What a life of pain he lived, sleeping many of his nights 
on the floor with the back of his head on the bottom of a chair, because he 
could sleep no other way without torture, his wife a still worse torment. 

"Some of the English clergy have had wives celebrated in the wrong direc- 
tion, but more of them have homes decorated and memorable with all conjugal 
afl;abilities. In the evening of the Sabbath, we worshiped in Robertson's 
church. We went into 'the extramural cemetery' to see his grave. Though 
dead twenty-six years, his tomb bears all the mark of fresh affection. 

"On all sides vines and flowers in highest culture. Two bronze medal- 
lions, one by his congregation, the other by the working people who almost 
idolized him. On the one medallion his church have inscribed 'Honored as a 
minister, beloved as a man, he awakened the holiest feelings in poor and rich, 
in ignorant and learned ; therefore is he lamented as their guide and comforter, 
by many who, in the bond of brotherhood and in grateful remembrance have 
erected this monument.' On the other medallion the working people, whose 
practical friend he proved himself to be, preferred the inscription, 'To the 
Reverend F. Robertson, M. A. In grateful remembrance of his sympathy and 
in deep sorrow for their loss the members of the Mechanics' Institution and 
the workingmen of Brighton, have placed this medallion on their benefactor's 
tomb.' How independent of time and death an earnest man lives on. 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 333 



IN-SIGNIFICANT CHURCHES. 

"That is a poor life which breaks down at the cemetery. Many of these 
illustrious English preachers had insignificant-looking churches. We went 
at Bristol to see Robert Hall's chapel. 

"The present sexton remembered the great Baptist orator and preacher. 
The church in Robert Hall's day would not hold more than six hundred audi- 
tors, but there he preached discourses that have rung round the world and 
will ring through the ages. 

"The size of a man's shop is not of so much importance as the style of 
work he turns out. Ole Bull could play the 'Hallelujah Chorus' on a corn- 
stalk fiddle. Blessed are all they who do their best whether in sphere resound- 
ing or insignificance. 

"But the Isle of Wight, as already hinted, has a supernal beauty. If a 
poet, you will go there and see Tennyson's summer residence, and find him 
sauntering among the copses with his inevitable pipe as celebrated as the cigar 
of the American general. 

"If you are an invalid, you will go there to bless your lungs with the soft 
atmosphere of its valleys. If you are fond of royalty, you will either, get into 
the queen's castle at Osborne, or see her equipage on its daily 'outing.' 

"If you are a Christian, you will go to the village which Dean Richmond 
has made immortal. Stop at the inn called the Hare and Hounds, and visit 
the grave at the northeast of the church, reading on the tombstone: 

" 'Sacred to the Memory of 
ELIZABETH WALBRIDGE, 
The Dairyman's Daughter, 
who died May 30th, 1801, 
Aged 31 Years. 
She being dead, yet speaketh.' 

Or the tomb of the schoolmaster and church-clerk, whose epitaph I should 
think had been written by some lad who had felt the switch of the pedagogue, 
and took post mortem vengeance : 



334 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



" *In yonder sacred pile his voice was wont to sound, 
And now his body rests beneath the hallowed ground. 
He taught the peasant boy to read and use the pen ; 
His earthly toils are o'er — he's cried his last Amen!' 

"Or, if you are fond of antiquities, you will go to Carisbrook Castle and see 
the room where Princess Elizabeth, her heart broken at the imprisonment and 
death of her father, Charles L, was found dead with her head on the open 
Bible at the text — 'Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and 
I will give you rest.' 

"Or, if fond of tragedy, you will stand on the bank at Sandown and look 
off upon the water where, a year or two ago, the Eurydice sank, with all on 
board, under a sudden squall. A gentleman described to me the scene and 
how the bodies looked as they were brought up the beach. 

THE WONDERFUL ISLE OP WIGHT. 

"Oh, how wonderful for all styles of interests is this Isle of Wight — ^the 
bays, the yachts, the hills, the mansions, the arbors, the bridges, the 72,000 
souls augmented by the temporary population from the sweltering cities! 
Ventnor and Undercliff and Shanklinchine and Blackgarg ! 

"The isle, twenty-three miles long by thirteen wide, is one great dream 
of beauty. 

"What trees arch it! What streams silver it! What flowers emboss it! 
What memories haunt it ! 

" 'The sparkling streamlet, joyous bright and free, 
Leaps through the rocky chine to kiss the sea.' 

"Memorable among my wanderings of the summer of 1879, will be the 
day spent on the Isle of Wight. The long storm of weeks lifted that morning, 
and there were gardens above as well as gardens beneath, groined roof of 
cloud over tesselated pavements and field. Fleets sailing the sea, fleets sailing 
the sky. Boats racing in the bay, and regattas of cloud on the sky. The scene 
seemed let down out of heaven on two crimson pulleys of sunrise and sunset. 

"If you want to mingle with the jolly masses of England, let loose for a 
holiday, go to Brighton. If you want to see the highest fashion of the realm, 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



335 



and relieve the plethora of an apoplectic pocketbook, go to Scarborough. But 
if you want to dream of eternal woods, and eternal waters, and eternal sun- 
shine, make your pillow somewhere on the blissful and enchanting Isle of 
Wight. 

''Our hearts overflow with gratitude to God and the English people. I 
do not think any American ever had so good an opportunity of seeing this 
country as I have had. I have been from one end of it to the other, and seen 
its vast population by day and by night, at work and in assemblage. 

"Among other places I have been to Nottingham, the city of lace ; Birming- 
ham, the city of metals; Manchester, the city of cotton manufactory; Liver- 
pool, the city of international communication ; Edinburgh, the city of universi- 
ties ; Glasgow, the city of ship carpentry; Newcastle-on-Tyne, the city of coals; 
Sheffield, the city of sharp knives; Bristol, the city of West India produce; 
Luton, the city of straw hats ; Northampton, the city of leather ; Hull, the city 
of big hearts and large shipping ; York, the city of cathedral grandeur ; Hen- 
ley, the city of pottery ; Perth, the city of Walter Scottish memories ; Dundee, 
the city of Robert McCheyne; Paisley, the city of shawls; Aberdeen, the city 
of granite; Brighton, the city of summer play; Rochdale, the city of John 
Bright ; Chester, the city of antiquities ; London, the city of everything grand, 
glorious, indescribable — stupendous London! May she stand in peace and 
prosperity till the archangel's trumpet splits open the granite of Westminster 
Abbey, and lets up all her mighty dead from the kings of five centuries ago to 
Sir Rowland Hill, the author of penny postage. 

''By all this journey I am impressed with the fact that England is over- 
crov/ded, and must have relief. America is the country that will yet save 
England. 

"A cool and cautious Englishman who thoroughly understands his country 
said to me : 

A PLAN FOR POPULATINa AMERICA. 

" 'We want to send five million people to America before Christmas, and 
then five million more.* 

"It is not because the crops have failed this year, but because, by natural 
increase, the population have not room to live on this island. 



336 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES, 



''Many prominent people beg me to urge upon the United States Govern- 
ment to help in the transportation of this surplus population to the lands of 
the Far West of America. The movement seems to me grandly practical. 
Our United States Government gives western lands for a mere nothing to 
those who will go and settle upon them. But there are millions of industrious 
Englishmen who would gladly go and settle there if they had the means of 
transportation. An act of Congress providing for such transportation to these 
unsettled lands, the lands to remain in the title of the government till the new 
settler should, by his own sweat, earn the property for his own home, would be 
the enrichment of America and the salvation of England. 

■There are not enough ships on the Atlantic to carry the people who would 
go ; and these people are not made of the idle or vagabond, or vicious classes, 
but moral, intelligent and hard-working when they can get anything to do. 
Get our western lands tilled, and the school-house and the church in full work, 
and the days of universal garden are here. Heaven will probably be an Eng- 
lish garden on an American hillside. 

"But now I am going to show you something you have never dreamed of. 

BTJKLED CITY OF TJVICANIUM. 

"A grave is being opened in England that overtops all other things in stir- 
ring interest. Not the grave of a prince or a king, but the grave of a whole 
city, the buried city of Uvicanium. Riding out from Shrewsbury or Welling- 
ton for five miles you see the soil getting black, and along on the banks of the 
Severn you find the site of an ancient city built by the Romans, a city seventeen 
hundred years old. For many centuries it has lain under ground save a frag- 
ment of wall. Fifteen hundred years ago England was covered with these 
Roman towns and cities. Being far from the seat of government at Rome, 
these distant people broke away from the home government and formed inde- 
pendent principalities, and these principalities finally became jealous and 
quarrelsome and destroyed each other. 

"So this city of Uvicanium perished. Charcoal in the remains of the city 
show that it was destroyed by fire, and the skeletons found in the cellars, some 
crouching and some prostrate, show that the ruin was sudden and accompanied 
with horrible massacre. 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND. WALES, 



*This buried city is on the estate of the Duke of Cleveland, who is an old 
man and grouty and has no interest in the exhumation. The Queen and the 
Prince of Wales offer to contribute to the entire uncovering of this dead city, 
provided the title of the ground be put in a shape that will secure its permanent 
possession as a place of public interest. Although but a small part has been 
exhumed, enough has been exposed to make the place worthy of a visit by 
every traveler. 

**Here is the blacksmith-shop with a stone anvil where they made plows and 
battle-axes. Here is the bath-room with floor beautifully tesselated, showing 
that those citizens admired cleanliness and art. Here is the heating apparatus 
by which the whole house was warmed seventeen hundred years ago. 

*'There is the masonry wonderful in the fact that the mortar has never 
since been equaled, for it is harder than the stone, in some places where the 
stone has crumbled the mortar standing firm. 

"Capitals and bases and shafts show that the second century was not a 
whit behind the nineteenth in some things. 

''Here is where the form of a female was found, and there the skull of an 
old man with one hundred and thirty-two pieces of coin near him, and a few 
heads of nails and some decomposed wood showing that the money was in a 
box. 

"The old man, no doubt, at the time of the taking of the city, crawled in 
here to save his Hfe and his treasure. The heads on the coins were those of 
Constantine, Valens, Julian, Theodore, and Tetricus. 

"Here are the store-room and some specimens of burnt wheat. The houses 
had no upper stories and no staircases. In places you can see where the stones 
have been worn away by the feet of seventeen centuries ago. 

"Here is a room which must have belonged to some mechanic, a worker in 
bone. Here are the skeletons of horses and oxen of sixteen hundred years 
past. 

"We pick up and put in our pocket a few specimens of teeth that ached 
fourteen hundred years ago. 

"Here is a receptacle in which the inhabitant used to sweep the rubbish of 
the household, hair pins, bone needles, nails, oyster shells, and broken pottery. 



338 THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



"The hair pins were made of bone, and thicker in the middle so as not to 
sHp out from the coil of hair which adorned the females. 

"Out of these ruins have been taken steelyards, a strigil for scraping the 
skin in the baths, artists' palettes, a horse-shoe, and medicine stamps. 

"It seems the inhabitants were troubled with weak eyes, and all the medi- 
cine stamps indicate treatment for that disorder. 

"The name of one of the enterprising doctors of the city is thus preserved. 
Tiberius Claudius was the physician's name. But they are all gone, and Dr. 
Claudius has overtaken his patients. There are urns containing human ashes. 
There is the grave of a soldier by the name of Caius Mannius. 

"Most of the skulls of the inhabitants are, eleven out of nineteen, de- 
formed skulls, and one might suppose that it had been a city of deformed peo- 
ple, but it has been found that the pressure of the ground and the action of 
certain acids in the vegetable mold changes the shape of the skull, and so the 
people of that age and that city may have been as well formed as the inhabi- 
tants of our modern cities. 

"Place of interest untold! For ages the ruins were untouched. The 
ancients believed that these ruins were devil-haunted, and no man had the 
bravery to touch the spot. 

STOBY OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 

"The following story about the place was told to William the Conqueror. 
Although the place was thoroughly given over to evil spirits, one Peverel 
armed himself with shield of gold and a cross of azure, and with fifteen knights 
and others went in and took lodging. The night came on full of thunder and 
lightning, and all fell flat on the ground in terror. But Peverel implored God 
and the Virgin Mary to defend him from the devil. Then the arch fiend 
approached, enough fire and brimstone pouring from his mouth to light up 
the whole region. Peverel signed himself with the sign of the cross, and 
attacked the champion of hell. 

"When Satan saw the cross in the hand of Peverel he trembled and got 
weak, and surrendered. Then Peverel fell upon him, and cried : 

" 'Tell me, you foul creature, who you are, and what you do in this town. 
I conjure you in the name of God and of the Holy Cross!' 



THROUGH SCOTLAND AND WALES. 



339 



"So the devil was defeated and driven out of the dead city of Uvicanium. 

"In this legend we may get intimation of how the fell spirit may be driven 
out of our living cities. 

"He makes as fearful a fight now as when in thunder and lightning he 
dropped on Peverel and his brave knights in Uvicanium. 

"But when Peverel lifted the cross his Satanic majesty got weak in the 
knees, and surrendered the city he had held so long. Not by sword or gun, 
or police club, or ecclesiastical anathema will the Satanic powers be expelled 
from New York, or Brooklyn, or London, but by the same weapon which 
Peverel carried. 

"Lift it firmly, lift it high, lift it perpetually, the cross, the holy cross, 
the triumphant cross of the Christian religion. One flash of that will send 
consternation upon all the battalions diabolic. 

"Thus may the boastful and proud cities of our time learn salutary lesson 
from the twilight and midnight legends of the dead city of the dead centuries. 

"As soon as you arrive in Liverpool for sight-seeing, make inquiry for the 
best way of getting to Uvicanium." 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



TALMAGE SUCCORS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 

THE LAND OF GOLDSMITH^ GRATTAN^ BURKE AND O'CONNELL IF ORATORS 

WERE DEMANDED^ THEY WOULD SPRING FROM THE PEAT BEDS— OPPRES- 
SION GIVES BIRTH TO GREAT SOULS GREAT IMPROVEMENT IN IRELAND 

HELP FOR THE FAMINE-STRICKEN OF IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 

When Talmage came into Ireland he seems to have fallen deeply in love 
with the country. Its romantic history, the country of oratory and the 
home of the shamrock, was familiar to him. In his memoirs of this visit he 
shows remarkable familiarity with the men and events of Irish record. He 
sympathizes with the race as a man of his sentiments must have done. 'This 
is the country that grew Oliver Goldsmith!" he exclaims, "and Henry Grat- 
tan! and Edmund Burke! and Daniel O'Connell! Some people here remem- 
ber this last giant, and how as an Italian writer says, that when O'Connell 
applauded, or cursed, or wept, or laughed, all Ireland applauded, or cursed, 
or wept, or laughed with him. His manner must have been overwhelmingly 
magnetic. A gentleman who heard him described to me O'ConnelFs won- 
derful adaptation to the style of his audience. Appearing before a rough, 
out-of-door crowd one day, he began his address by saying: 'How are you 
boys? And how are the women who own ye?' 

'There are no Irishmen now as prominent as were the great men men- 
tioned above, but if the time should come that demands the service of such 
men, they would spring up from the peat beds, and out of the pavements of 
Limerick, and Ballycastle, all armed with pen, or sword, or speech for the 
emergency. 

"The Lord does not sharpen His weapons till He wants to use them. No 

oppression, no Robert Emmet; no struggle for independence, no Patrick 

Henry; no Austrian outrage, no Louis Kossuth; no American revolution, no 

340 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA, 



341 



Washington; no Waterloo, no Wellington; no Warren Hastings* despolia- 
tion, no Edmund Burke's nine day speech; no Catholic emancipation, no 
fiery Daniel O'Connell. It is absurd to think that all the patriotism and 
courage of the world have died out with the heroes of the last generation. 
Tread on them, abuse them, maltreat them, drive them to the wall, and see 
if the Irish of 1885 will not fight as well as their illustrious ancestry. 

'This island has for me a complete fascination. Most travelers writing of 
it give their chief time to describing its destitution; but they would tell a 
different story if they would only compare the Ireland of to-day with the 
Ireland of one hundred years ago. 

IMPROVEMENTS IN IRELAND. 

"Ireland of to-day is a paradise compared with what it once displayed 
of drunkenness, dueling, gambling, and public violence. Not only the stu- 
dents of colleges went into bloody encounters, but professors. 

"Hutchinson, the provost of a college, challenged and fought Doyle, a 
master in chancery, and the provost^s son fought Lord Mountmorris. Duel- 
ing clubs were established — no one allowed to be a member until he had 
killed some one, or tried to do so. At hotels weapons were kept for guests, 
in case they wanted to amuse themselves by killing each other. On one 
occasion while two were in duel, some one said. Tor God's sake part them!' 
'No,' said the other, let them fight it out; one will probably be killed and the 
other hanged for the murder, and society will get rid of two pests.' 

"A gentleman seated at a table had a covered dish passed to him from 
a gentleman at another table. The cover lifted from the dish revealed smok- 
ing potatoes. After a while another dish was handed on; the cover lifted, 
it revealed a loaded pistol, and the dinner-hour ended in manslaughter. 

"All this fondness for dueling has passed, and in Ireland those who save 
life are more admired than those who take it. It is less than a century ago 
when ruffianism rode dominant. If there were a fair daughter in a house- 
hold, there was not a moment of domestic safety. 

"Companies of bandits would attack the mansion and carry off the female 
prize, and if in accompHshing this it were necessary to kill the father and 



342 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 



brother the achievement was considered all the more brilliant, and the 
courts were slow to punish. While there were penalties threatened against 
such theft of household treasures, the law was evaded by putting the female 
on the horse of the bandit, and he rode behind so that it might be said she 
took him instead of his taking her. 

''In this way the mansions and the castles of the princely were dishon- 
ored, and the men foremost in such outrages were greeted and admired 
as heroes, and walked about in pretentious uniform — top boots and red 
waistcoats, lined with lace. Such men now would find short pilgrimage to 
the prisons of Ireland. 

"A century ago Ireland's literature was depraved to the last degree of 
indecency. The most popular song of the day was descriptive of a prison 
scene the night previous to public hanging, and was entitled 'The night 
afore Larry was stretched.' Now each city of Ireland has its eminent 
authors. Many of the newspapers and magazines are administrative of ele- 
vated literary and moral taste. A Belfast or Dublin short-hand writer can 
take down a speech as rapidly as the stenographer of a London or New York 
paper. 

"A century ago the amusements of the Irish people were cruel and bar- 
barous. Bull-baiting was in high favor, the crowds looking on approvingly 
while the bull, fastened to a ring with a rope furnished by 'the mayor of 
the ring,' would be teased by the dogs, and they in turn bruised and tor- 
mented until sometimes a broken leg of the dog would have to be cut off 
so that, with the three remaining legs, it might. Unimpeded, go on with 
the savagery. 

"The public executions were one of the popular amusements. The 
hangman would appear in grotesque apparel, a mask on his face and a huge 
hump on his back. 

A DROLL HANGMAN". 

"One of these hangmen, Tom Galvin by name, was particularly cele- 
brated for his hanging drollery. Nothing affronted him so much as the 
pardon of a criminal whom he expected to have the privilege of hanging. 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 



343 



He would indignantly exclaim: 'It is a hard thing to be taking the bread 
out of the mouth of an old man like me.' 

"Tom Galvin, the hangman, lived until recently, and when called upon by 
curious people would take the old rope with which he used to hang pris- 
oners and put it slyly around the neck of the unsuspecting visitor, giving 
it a sudden pull that would, by way of a joke, turn the visitor black in the 
face. 

"All these styles of amusement have left Ireland, and crowded concert- 
halls, and costly picture galleries, and jaunting cars carrying the people out 
into the country for 'an airing,' suggest that while Ireland may not be as 
good and happy as we would wish, it is far better and happier than in olden 
times. 

"Ireland of a century ago had a character which illustrated the villainy 
of his time. 'Tiger Roche,' as he was called, was as bad as he was brave, 
and as mean as he was generous. Indeed he was a mixture of impossibilities. 
He attracted Lord Chesterfield by his suavity, and frightened the mountain- 
eers with his ferocity. He was spoiled by the caresses of the great, and in- 
stead of availing himself of the grand opportunities opened before him, went 
to work to see how much infamy he could achieve. 

"He crossed to Canada and joined the Indians in their warfare against 
the white population, was charged with stealing a rifle, and utterly disgraced. 
Then he gave his life to wreaking vengeance on the heads of his 
slanderers. He returned ta Ireland, where he was being restored to favor, 
when the slander of the stolen rifle reached the 'Emerald Isle.' But the thief 
who stole the rifle died, and in his dying moments confessed himself the 
criminal. Soon 'Tiger Roche' becomes leader in the attempt to put down 
Dublin rufflanism. The law ^breaker becomes the law executor. Then he 
aspires to the hand of an heiress with a very large income, but before the 
day of marriage, because of his large expenditures of money he is thrown 
into prison. He falls under the crushing misfortune, but rises again till he 
gets the nomination for Parliament, but he declines the nomination. He be- 
comes fascinated with another heiress, gets her property and spends it till 
she and her mother have to retire in penury. 



344 TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA,. 



''He sailed for India, but on shipboard quarreled with the captain and 
so was turned in to mess with the common sailors. Getting on shore, he 
watched for the captain with murderous intent, and the captain was found 
one morning dead with nine stabs in his left side. 

" Tiger Roche' fled to the Cape. Pursued there, he fled to Bombay. 
There he was caught, taken back to England and, through some technicaHty 
of the law, acquitted. After all he died a natural death, although every day 
for three-fourths of his life was a robbery of the gallows. 

LAW AND ORDER IN IRELAND. 

"We can hardly imagine such a character in Ireland to-day. He was ap- 
plauded and imitated. But law and order are as thorough to-day in Ire- 
land as in any nation under the sun. The Presbyterians of the North and 
the Catholics of the South hate each other with a complete hatred, but the 
only war is a war of words. 

''Grievous wrongs is Ireland suffering, but her wrongs will be righted. 
Better than she was in the past, she will be far better in the future. An 
Irishman holds the highest legal position in England to-day. The voice of 
Ireland is potent in the councils of Great Britain. There will be revolution 
(I pray God not by sword, but by legislation). Her desolations will be fur- 
rowed into harvests of civilization and Christian prosperity. 

"Peace upon Ireland! May her wounds be healed, and her hunger fed, 
and her woes alleviated! 

"Leaving to other articles the stories of her mountains and cities as they 
now are, we conclude with the poet's apostrophe: 

" 'Great, glorious and free. 
First flower of the earth, and first gem of the seal' 

BELFAST THE CHICAGO OP IRELAND. 

"The Irish channel treated us better than it treats most people. It lay 
down quietly till we got over it. In the calm, bright moon we landed. But 
your first step in Ireland reminds you of her sufferings. Within sight of 
where you land to take the cars for Belfast is the place where the Catholics 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA, 345 

were driven into the sea by their persecutors, and where nine hundred monks 
were murdered by the Danes. 

*'No country has ever endured more wrongs than Ireland. But as you 
roll into Belfast you are cheered by a scene oi prosperity. 

''Belfast is the Chicago of Ireland. This city, presented by James I. to 
Sir Arthur Chichester as an 'insignificant village,' now has 212,000 inhab- 
itants, and all sails set for further progress. She makes enough linen to 
provide table coverings and surplices and under-garments for all the world. 

"By an expenditure of $1,250,000 she has made her harbor easy of access 
to immense shipping. 

"The thrift of the city, with the exception of occasional depressions, is 
unprecedented in Ireland. The people are kind, hospitable, enthusiastic, 
and moral. Her multitude of churches and religious institutions has had its 
evident effect on the population. Her monuments, banks, colleges, and 
bridges absorb the traveler's attention. 

" 'Spanning the Lagan now we have in view 

The great Long Bridge with arches twenty-two.' 

"Belfast has an array of very talented preachers. Her pulpit is second 
to no city under the sun. The churches are large and thronged. Her 
literary institutions have the ablest professorships, and the longest roll 
of students. If I wanted to live in Ireland, and had my choice,- 1 would 
live in Belfast. 

"Thence you will run up to Londonderry — a walled city, historical down 
to its last brick. You feel, as you enter the city, that you have passed out 
of this century into the seventeenth century, and you hear the guns of siege 
thundering against the walls. For one hundred and five days the assault 
lasted, till cats and dogs were attractive food to the starving inhabitants. 
Walker, the minister of the place, proved himself a patriot, and harangued 
the people to courage and endurance. A high monument has been raised 
to perpetuate his memory. Two thousand three hundred people died from 
the siege. So that the glory of the city is the glory of its majestic and 
Christian suffering. Ay! ay! it is always so. Nothing is won by man, or 
church, or community, or nation, but through fire. 



346 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 



"In the outskirts of this city was the famous agricultural school, and on 
arriving I immediately asked for Templemoyle. Thackeray describes it as 
the most wonderful school in all the world. He Hked it better than Eton. 
He said, after writing Templemoyle,' thirty-seven years ago: There are 
at this present writing five hundred boys at Eton, kicked, and licked, and 
bullied by another hundred, scrubbing shoes, running errands and making 
false concords, and still calling it education!' 

'Then he describes how superior this agricultural school was to all that, 
the doctor's bill for seventy pupils amounting to thirty-five shillings per 
year. The boys were to rise at 5:30 o'clock a. m., and to have for breakfast 
eleven ounces of oatmeal made in stirabout, and one pint of sw^eet milk. 
The bill of fare was printed at the beginning of thie session, and it makes 
me hungry to think of the sparseness of it. 

''When I asked about the school, one man told me it had 'gone down,' 
and another that it had 'gone up.' But all agreed in the fact that it had 
gone. I suppose that school, like many other institutions, had been killed 
by too many rules. Templemoyle is in private hands, and a mere matter 
of history. 

"Walking around the ramparts of the city, you can look off into the 
far past, and see the apprentice boys driving back King James, making 
themselves immortal, for the roll of their courage is handed down from age 
to age — ^William Crookshanks, Alexander Irving, James Stewart, Robert 
Morrison, John Coningham, WilHam Cairns, Samuel Harvey, and others. 
A man dies well when he dies in defense of his home, city, or country. 

THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY. 

"You take a short run by cars and reach the strangest place on earth — 
the Giant's Causeway. The rocks here are cut as by mathematical calcula- 
tion. A man is a fool who can look at these rocks and not realize that 
the world had a design and Designer. Was it nothing but chance that 
made them octagonal, hexagonal, pentagonal? 

"There are 35,000 columns of rock more wonderful than all the sculptors 
and architects of the ages could have hewn them. 



TALMAGB FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 847 

'There are rocks called the Chimney Tops, which the Spanish armada in 
the fog took for the towers of Dunluce castle, and blazed away at, but got 
no answering cannonade save the echo of the everlasting hills. 

"Here is what is called the 'Giant's Organ,' because the rocks resemble 
the pipes of that monarch of musical instruments.. 

'T would like to stand by this Giant's Organ during a thunderstorm and 
hear the elements play on it the oratorio of the creation. 

"Here also is the 'Giant's Amphitheater,' the benches of rock extending 
round in galleries above each other, suggesting a fit audience room for 
the gathering of the Judgment Day. 

"We got into a boat, and with six oarsmen rowed out on the sea and 
hence into two of the caverns where the ocean rolls with a grandeur inde- 
scribable. The roof of the Dunkerry Cave is pictured, and frescoed, and 
emblazoned by the hand of God. It is sixty feet high above high-water 
mark. 

"As the boat surges into this cavern you look round, wondering whether 
there are enough oarsmen to manage it. 

"A man fires a pistol that we may hear the report as loud in that cavern 
as the heaviest crash of an August thunderstorm. 

"You swing round for a few moments in that strange temple and then 
come forth w^ith an impression that you will carry forever. 

"There can be no power in time or eternity to efface that stupendous 
memory. The rustic guides talk to you with the ease of a geologist about 
felspar and hornblende, and basalt, and trap rock. 

"Before you die you must see the Giant's Causeway. You go to look 
at a celebrated lake, but you have seen other lakes. You go to look at a 
high mountain, but you have seen other mountains. You go to see a 
great city, but you have seen other cities. You go to see a famous tree, yet 
you have seen other trees. But there is nothing like the Giant's Cause- 
way. It stands alone and aside from all geological wonders. 

"The painter tries to sketch it and gives it a ten-pin alley appearance, 
the ten-pins just set up. 



348 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA, 



'There is no canvas high enough, no pencil skillful enough, no genius 
mighty enough to adequately present this curiosity. 

"Ireland might well have been built, if for nothing but to hold the Giant's 
Causeway. 

"How do they account for this causeway? It seems that a Scotch giant 
was in quarrel with an Irish giant, and the Scotch giant told the Irishman 
that he would come over and give him a severe trouncing if it were not 
for getting his feet wet in the sea. 

"The Irish giant was spoiling for a fight, and so built a road across to 
Scotland. Then the Scotchman crossed over, and the Irishman punished 
him for his impudence with a shillalah. As time went by the High Road 
across the sea sank, leaving only the present remains, called the Giant's 
Causeway. 

"But instead of this tradition, which says the road was built to let two 
belligerents cross over and meet each other in combat, I think it was built 
for the purpose of allowing the human mind to cross over from earth to 
heaven. 

"It lifts us among the subHmities. I imagine that this is the last pillar 
of the earth that will give way. After the roof of the world has fallen in, 
and the capitals of the mountains shall have crumbled, and the foundation of 
the earth has sunlc, these gray columns shall run their grandeur across the 
desolation, and these organ pipes of basalt sound forth the dirge of a dead 
and departed world. 

SYMPATHY rOR STRICKEN IRELAND. 

Dr. Talmage showed his sympathy for the Irish people when in 1880 that 
island was suffering from a great famine. His sermon for the purpose of 
raising funds to help the starving people of that most unfortunate country is 
one of the strongest and most eloquent appeals to the charity of the world 
ever uttered. He pleads for the Irish as though they were indeed his broth- 
ers in blood and their sufferings were his own. After enumerating the rea- 
sons why those who have been blessed with prosperity should hurry tc relieve 
those from whom fortune has withheld her favors he said: "Famine is a 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 349 

monster that has at some time put its paw on almost every nation, with hot 
tongue lapping up the fevered blood of the starving; and this morning it is 
howling for its prey, and its voice comes shuddering across the Atlantic. 
Last Tuesday I received a cablegram from the Lord Mayor of Dublin, saying : 
'Famine is inevitable ; aid needed/ Last Sabbath I received a cablegram from 
Lord James Butler, of Dublin, who said : 'Fuel and food needed in the west 
of Ireland,' while at the same time in the telegram he deprecated political 
agitation, as, in his opinion, doing great damage. I have received this week 
also a cablegram from the Earl of Kintore, the great Scottish philanthropist, 
who confirms all these tidings ; so it is very certain in my mind that this is not 
a political dodge, as some had protested; it is not even a quarrel between 
landlord and tenant; it is an unmistakable, agonizing, overwhelming, stun- 
ning, million-voiced shriek for bread. 

FAMINES IN IBELAND. 

' 'Ireland once had plenty. In the seventeenth century she had a superfluity 
of grain fields, herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep straying through her val- 
leys and up and down her mountain sides. Prolonged wars, but plenty to eat. 
The tale of woe of Irish famine began in the eighteenth century, in 1727, and 
hundreds perished that year; in 1741, and four hundred thousand perished 
of the famine; in 1756, and a writer of that day says: 'Two-thirds of our 
population are starving;' in 1826, when a writer says: 'Ireland is the land 
of anomalies — the greatest destitution on the richest soil. The greatest 
wretchedness in all the world is here. The complexion of the people blue, or 
green, according as they have been compelled to devour weeds, decided by 
the color of the weeds they devour.' Famine in 1846, which some of you 
remember — in 1846 when the Government of the United States sent five hun- 
dred thousand dollars to relieve the famine in Ireland, and that great gift on 
the part of our country was met by ten million pounds, or the fifty million dol- 
lars, voted by the English Parliament for the relief of the famine in Ireland. 
Beneficence in New York responding to the ten thousand dollars given by 
Queen Victoria out of her own private purse, that the hunger of Ireland 
might be fed. Persia, China, Egypt, India, joining Christian nations in char- 



350 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 



itable crusade; yet hundreds of thousands of people perishing, many of them 
as heroic as the Irish woman who said to her husband, 'Come here, let us 
all die together rather than touch that which belongs to another/ A famine 
so terrible that the remembrance of it, in nineteen years, sent three million six 
hundred and fifty-nine thousand of Irish people to this country. 

BREAD, NOT BITLLETS. 

"And now the famine of 1880. I knew it would come. I saw the deluge 
in England, Ireland, and Scotland last summer. I saw the harvest that had 
been partially gathered float away on the floods. I heard prominent citizens 
in the streets of Belfast and Dublin and Londonderry say: 'We shall have 
famine; it is inevitable.' And it has come, but with this alleviation, that 
whereas in 1846 it took the news two weeks to come by steamer, and then the 
reply two weeks to travel back, now, thanks to the heroes of ocean telegraphy, 
the cry comes in a flash, and the answer goes back in a flash, so that in the 
morning Ireland cries 'Hungry !' and before nightfall America responds : 'The 
bread is on the way.' 

"Do you know that famine in Ireland is especially distressing because, as 
a nation, the Irish are peculiarly affectionate, and it is a little harder for that 
nation than almost any other nation to see their families suffering and dying? 
Who doubts this who has noticed that the Irish serving-maids of this coun- 
try, at the greatest sacrifice, have for the last twenty or thirty years been 
sending back all the money they could spare to Ireland to buy food and pay 
rent, and finally to transport their loved ones to this land, many of them 
giving every penny not absolutely necessary for their expenses — a story of 
filial and fraternal and sisterly affection unsurpassed save by the matchless 
love of God. Now, I say, it is among that class of people, so strong, peculiar- 
ly strong, in their affections, that famine has come; and now, while I speak, 
great populations are surging up and down the Irish cities carrying the 
black flag; and the way to put down these riots is by giving them bread, not 
a policeman's club — ^bread, not armed soldiery. 

STARVING AMID BEAUTiriTL SCENERY. 

"I have to tell you, my friends, that this famine in Ireland is especially 
distressing because it is surrounded by such brilliant scenery. Destitution 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 351 

never so ghastly as when crouching at the foot of such hills, and looking into 
the mirror of such lakes, and begging at the gate of such castles. I do not 
believe God has crowded into so small a space so much beautiful landscape in 
all the earth as there is to be found in that one small island — an island only 
about two hundred and thirty miles long by one hundred and ten miles broad 
— rhomboid in shape, its rocks showing more of the skill of the divine archi- 
tect than any rocks on earth. Witness the octagonal, the hexagonal, and 
the pentagonal of her granite, and the forty thousand columns of her Giant's 
Causeway, some of them set up like the pillars of the king of musical in- 
struments, so that they are called the organ, and as I stood looking on them 
I thought that it would be fit to play upon that organ the grand march of 
the last judgment, God's thunders trampling the pedals. An island indented 
with ninety-two harbors, as beautiful Galway, and Donegal, and Kingstown, 
and Valentia. Her coasts illuminated by night with sixty-two lighthouses. 
I\Iore than two hundred fairy islands sprinkling the edges of Ireland with 
magical brightness. Loughs Erne, Corrib and Mask, and that strip of land- 
scape flung out of heaven, the Killarneys. 

A LAND OF LOVELINESS. 

*'What silvery glee of Rivers Shannon, and Boyne, and Foyle, and Bann, 
and Blackwater, and other rivers rich with salmon and pike and trout. What 
floral strewing marvelous ferns among the Kerries, and Alpine plants in 
Antrim, and seaweed, a very bewichment of beauty, so that you come away 
with your hands and your arms and your mind and your immortal soul full 
of it. The scenery, adorned with glorious old ruins like St. Dunluce, and 
Loughmore Castle, and Blarney Castle, and Athenry Castle, each moss-cov- 
ered stone a lyric. Amid that matchless beauty sits famine and starvation, 
'the more ghastly by its surroundings. The mineral and agricultural capacity 
of Ireland not developed makes the famine the more appalling. Soil waiting 
to yield to the acre more harvest than in the same space can be yielded in 
Russia or America. Loam of the richest fertility. Flax harvest the fore- 
runner of richer flax, and hemp enough to hang all the traitors to liberty and 
justice all around the world. Mineral wealth of iron and lead and copper 



362 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 



and silver and gold which have already hinted their presence. Agricultural 
capacity which, if developed, would make famine impossible, and fills the 
hands of Ireland with charity for other nations, for the time is yet to come 
when Ireland, instead of being a mendicant, will be a benefactor. 

A EIGHT TO CALL UPON AMERICA. 

''The Irish are generous, they are generous to a fault. If you are in trouble 
the Irishman will go halves with you, and if that will not bring you out, 
then he will give you all he has and borrow something from the neighbors! 
But the squalor and the suffering, aggravated now by the mineral and the 
agricultural capacity of that country which is undeveloped! 

"O, sirs, Ireland in the day of her so-rrow has a right to call upon Amer- 
ica. She has always been our friend. Benjamin Franklin, at the close of 
the last century, wrote to this country, saying: 'The Irish people are the 
friends of the American people.' So it was proved in 1776; so it was proved 
in 1812; so it was proved two centuries ago, when there was famine in New 
England, and a shipload of breadstuffs came from Ireland to Boston; so it 
was proved in 1861, when our national troubles broke out, and in the front 
rank of armed courage flashed the Irishman's bayonet, and from the first 
conflict to the last was heard the Irishman's battle shout. Some of you know 
the name Oif Thomas Francis Meagher, and what he did at Malvern Hills 
and Cold Harbor. Did the Irishman prove himself self-sacrificing and brave 
and true to the flag under which he had come to live in our days of civil 
strife? Let Chickamauga and Antietam and South Mountain and Gettys- 
burg answer! 

IRISH PATRIOTISM AN INSPIRATION. 

"Moreover, the patriotism and eloquence of Ireland have been inspiration 
to orators and heroes all the world over, and Ireland has in that way brought 
all nations to obligation. In how many crises of our national history have 
our great men got inspiration from the names of Grattan and Edmund 
Burke and Erskine and Daniel 0''Connell, called by many the Washington 
of Europe? Why, sirs, there is in one passage of Robert Emmet's dying 
speech enough eloquence to kindle the eloquence of a century. The day 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 



363 



before he was first hung and then beheaded in Ireland for the sake of his 
principles — the day before, on the road to the scaffold, he waved a last adieu 
to Sarah Curran — of whose broken heart Washington Irving wrote so won- 
derfully — she in a carriage along the road waving back the farewell as he 
went out to die — the day before the execution, a young man only twenty-five 
years oi age, Robert Emmet uttered a speech as he looked into the face of 
an indignant court, a speech so full of patriotism and power and eloquence, 
it has hardly been equalled. 

"Oh, the brave words and the brave deeds in Ireland that have been in- 
spiration to all the world. I do not know any passage in history more thrill- 
ing than that when the men of 0''Brien, wounded in the hospital, unable to 
rise, when they heard the battle was going against them begged that stakes 
might be driven in the ground and they might be brought out and lashed 
fast to the stakes, so they could stand up, then with the right arm fight for 
their country. And so it was done, and these wounded men were carried 
out on couches, and the stakes were driven, and these men were fastened 
to the stakes, while with the right arm they fought for Ireland, and fought 
until they died. 

MAGNETIC IBISHMEN IN AMEBIOA. 

"But Ireland has sent her magnetic men to this shore. There are many 
here who remember the oratorical charm that thrilled the court-room when 
James T. Brady bowed and said, 'May it please the court and gentlemen of 
the jury.' And there may be here and there one who remembers so far back 
as the day of Thomas Addis Emmet, who closed his career as an advocate 
in Ireland by pleading for a client who must die because of a political oath 
he had taken — closing his speech by seizing the Bible and pressing it to his 
lips and saying: 'I go down with my client; I take the same oath.' Then 
coming to this land to become the compeer of William Wirt and John Ran- 
dolph, rising higher and higher in his influence at the forum, until falling 
dead in apoplectic fit in the court-house at Snug Harbor, and all the Supreme 
Court rooms of the land went into mourning, and learned eulogists declared 
that for purity of life, and greatness of soul, and magnificence of eloquence. 



354 TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 

Thomas Addis Emmet was unrivaled. By heroic deeds and heroic words 
Ireland has brought all lands under obligation. Now she sits in the shadow 
of death, the scenes of 1846 about to be repeated unless relief comes speedily. 

SHAMHOCK ENTWINES THE CROSS. 

'Tamine in Ireland. O Protestants and Catholics of America! I im- 
plore you that, forgetting all ecclesiastical distinctions, and with a faith in 
God so mighty that it shall disregard even the orange and the green, that 
you put your shoulders together for the relief of famishing Ireland. Merciful 
God ! shall it be that with our barns and our storehouses crowded with food 
we shall be heartless and unresponsive? No, it shall not be. For, as this 
day I entwine the shamrock around the cross, I hear a voice louder than the 
groan of famished Ireland — a voice of tears and blood and sacrifice, ex- 
claiming, 'I was a hungered, and ye gave me meat.* 

MASTERLY APPEAL FOR SUCCOR. 

*'By the empty bread tray of the Irish cabin, by the exhausted sack of 
oatmeal, by the blasted harvest fields, by the blanched cheeks oif women and 
children crying for help, by the four hundred thousand graves of those who 
perished in the Irish famine of 1741, and by the vaster number of graves of 
those who perished in 1846, I implore you not only to be generous but to 
be quick. I gather up the plaint of helpless childhood all over Ireland, and 
the sobbing of mothers whose children are dying on their breasts because 
the fountains of life are dried up, and the groans of men who can fight back 
no longer the wolf from the cabin, and by the wailing of uncounted multi- 
tudes of the starving — I gather them all up, and I intone them into one heart- 
rending cry for help. I am sure you will be faithful. Then, when your day 
of distress comes, you will have a right to expect swift relief. 'Blessed is 
he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.* 
Then, when the last great day of assize comes, and the whole world shall re- 
ceive its docmi, the great Judge will bend smilingly to you in memory of this 
day and say, T was naked, and ye clothed me ; I was hungry, and ye fed me ; 
inasmuch as ye did this to poor, starving Ireland, ye did it unto Me !* '* 



TALMAGE FEEDS IRELAND AND RUSSIA. 355 

At the close of this appeal to generosity a large collection was taken for 
the relief of Ireland. 

SUCCOR FOR RUSSIA. 

Dr. Talmage was as quick to act when other countries were suffering as 
he was in this case. He who never did anything by halves, managed, as 
editor of the Christian Herald, to raise $35,000 for the relief of the districts 
of Russia that were famine-stricken in 1892. The steamship Leo was char- 
tered and Dr. Talmage became his own supercargo and sailed to St. Peters- 
burg with a shipload of flour. The Czar, the Czarina and the entire imperial 
family welcomed Talmage, and the Czar talked with him for a long time on 
religious, social and political questions. What most struck Dr. Talmage and 
what he commented on most frequently when talking of his meeting with the 
Czar was that the bomb-threatened autocrat seemed to be entirely without fear. 

"Perhaps he is used to the thought of being assassinated," suggested one 
of Dr. Talmage's friends. 

"Ah, no," said the preacher. "But he is ready, and when a man is always 
ready to die, why should he be afraid of the form in which death may come ? 
A finer, nobler fellow than the Czar of Russia I never met. We chatted for a 
long time on religio-us, social and political questions." 

The Czar was undoubtedly of the opinion, from the circumstances of Dr. 
Talmage's visit, as well as from the newspaper publicity bestowed on the 
preacher, that Dr. Talmage stood high in the co^uncils of the American nation. 

Such was the kindly nature of Dr. Talmage. When poverty and fam- 
ine struck at the lives of people he did not pause to consider their nation- 
ality, or their religious beliefs. He acted at once with all the force of his 
nature and always with great results. 



# 



CHAPTER XIX. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 

PLEASING DISSERTATIONS ON EDUCATION, GROWTH, DEVELOPMENT THE 

FOLLY OF FLIRTATION THE USEFUL FRIEND MODESTY A NECESSARY 

ACCOMPLISHMENT — DISSERTATION ON DRESS — HONESTY AN ACTIVE 
PRINCIPLE. 

Dr. Talmage was never satisfied with the size of his congregation, as he 
was pleased to call all those that heard or read his sermons in the different 
publications of the country. He knew his virile preaching attracted mature 
minds from all stations of life, but he feared he was not reaching the young 
people in numbers at all commensurate with the adult admirers of his stren- 
uous religion. Having reached this conclusion he set out to write a series of 
addresses on subjects that should appeal directly to the growing generation, 
to be published in the papers that reached the largest number of homes. 
These he entitled Letters to Young People. He adopted a conversational 
style in these addresses and sought to treat such subjects as would be most 
likely to catch the fancy of youths and maidens about to enter on the more 
serious duties of life. His attempt was most successful. Talmage was soon 
quoted from one end of the country to the other on such subjects as love, 
marriage, divorce, home-keeping, courting, behavior in society, the choice 
of a wife, the choice of a husband, the folly of flirtation, unequal matches, a 
young woman's education, a young man's company, accomplishments, dress, 
and in fact almost every phase of domestic life. That he did this with an 
earnest desire to help smooth the way for those whose experience of the 
world was yet in a great part to be gained no one can doubt who reads these 

entertaining, if somewhat didactic little lectures. 

356 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



CHOICE OP A WIFE. 

He starts out with this characteristic utterance: "It is abeurd to think 
all men ought to be married. Some of them are so cross-grained that an 
angel from heaven could not in their companionship be able to preserve 
equanimity. You might as well put on your clerical bands and unite in wed- 
lock fire and gunpowder. The altar and the wedding party , would be picked 
up in fragments some distance aw^ay. There are antagonisms that can never 
be overcome. You occasionally find a man who spreads himself so widely 
over the path of life that there is no room for any one to walk beside him. 
He is not the one blade of a scissors, incomplete without the other blade. He 
is a chisel, made to cut his way through life alone ; or a file, full of roughness, 
made to be drawn across society, without any afiinity for other files. His 
disposition is a life-long protest against marriage. Others are so married to 
their occupation or profession that the taking of any other bride is a case of 
bigamy. There are men as severely tied to their literary work as was Chatter- 
ton, whose essay was not printed because of the death of the lord mayor. 
Chatterton made out the following account : 

Lost by the lord mayor's death in this essay £i lis 6d 

Gained in elegies £2 2s od 

Gained in essays 33 o 5 5 o 

Am glad he is dead by £3 13s 6d 

''When a man is as hopelessly literary as that, he ought to be a perpetual 
celibate. His library, his laboratory, his pictures are all the companionship 
needed! Indeed, some of the mightiest men this world ever saw have not 
patronized matrimony. Cowper, Pope, Newton, Swift, Locke, Walpole, Gib- 
bon, Hume, Arbuthnot, were single. Some of these marriage would have 
helped. The right kind of a wife would have cured Cowper's gloom, and 
given to Newton more practicability, and been a relief to Locke's overtaxed 
brain. A Christian wife might have converted Hume and Gibbon to a belief 
in Christianity. But Dean Swift, the old brute of a minister, did not deserve 
a wife, judging from the way in which he broke the heart of Jane Waryng 



358 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



first, and Esther Johnson afterward, and last of all, Vanessa. The great wit 
of his day, he was outwitted by his own cruelties. Admitting the fact that 
many men ought not to be married, we declare that the great majority ought 
religiously to seek a wife. 

MOST MARRIAGES DIVINEI*Y ARRANGED. 

*'The fact that most of the marriages are, taking all things into considera- 
tion, fit to be made, convinces us that they are divinely arranged. Almost 
every cradle has an affinity toward some other cradle. They may be on the 
opposite sides of the earth. But one child gets out of this cradle and another 
child gets out of that cradle, and with their first steps they start for each other. 
They may diverge from the straight path, going toward the north or south or 
east or west. They may fall down, but the two rise facing each other. They 
are approaching all through infancy. The one all through the years of boy- 
hood is going to meet the one who is coming through all the years of girlhood 
to meet him. The decision of parents as to what is best concerning them, and 
the changes of fortune may for a time seem to arrest the two journeys. But 
on they go. They may never have seen each other. They may never have 
heard of each other, but the two pilgrimages which started at the two cradles 
are nearing. After eighteen or twenty or thirty years the two come within 
sight. At first glance they may feel a dislike, and they may slacken their step. 
Yet something that the world calls fate, or that religion calls Providence, 
urges them on and on. They must meet. They come near enough to join 
hands in social acquaintance, after awhile to join hands in friendship, after 
awhile to join hearts. The delegate from the one cradle comes up the east 
aisle of the church with her father, the delegate from the other cradle comes 
up the west aisle of the church. The two long journeys end at the snow-drift 
of the bridal veil. The two chains made out of many years are forged to- 
gether by the gold link which the groom puts upon the third finger of the left 
hand. One on earth! May they be one in heaven! 

HORRORS OF BEING UNHAPPILY "YOKED." 

"Do you call this fatality ? I have only described the general arrangement. 
There are cases where the boy gets out of the wrong side of the cradle, and 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 



359 



forever he seems to have lost his way. Here is where the much-laughed-at 
idea of Martin Tupper comes in. Many who twenty-five years ago thought 
the counsel of this English poet concerning prayer on the matrimonial subject 
preposterous, now think it wise. Some who laughed then on one side of their 
mouths, are now, because of their rejection of the good advice, laughing on 
the other side of their mouths. The worst predicament possible is to be 
unhappily yoked. You see it is impossible to break the yoke. The more you 
pull apart the more galling the yoke. The minister might bring you up again, 
and in your presence read the marriage ceremony backward, might put you 
on the opposite sides of the altar from where you were when you were united, 
might take the ring off the finger, might rend the wedding veil asunder, might 
tear out the marriage-leaf from the family Bible record, but all. that would fail 
to unmarry you. 

**It is better not to make the mistake, than to attempt its correction. But 
men and women do not reveal all their characteristics till after marriage, and 
how a^'e you to avoid committing the fatal blunder? 

"Take Martin Tupper's direction. There is only one Being in the uni- 
verse who can tell you whom to choose, and .that is the Lord of Paradise. He 
made Eve for Adam, and Adam for Eve, and both for each other. Adam had 
not a large group of women from whom to select his wife, and it was fortu- 
nate, judging from some mistakes which he had made, that it was Eve or 
nothing. There is in all the world some one made for you as certainly as Eve 
was made for Adam. 

''All sorts of mistakes occur, because Eve was made out of a rib from 
Adam's side. Nobody knows which of his twenty-four ribs was taken for 
the nucleus. If you depend entirely upon yourself in the selection of a wife ; 
there are twenty-three chances to one that you will select the wrong rib. 

SOME WICKED WIVES. 

"By the fate of Job whose wife coaxed him to swear; by the fate of Ahab 
whose wife induced him to steal ; by the fate of John Wesley, whose wife was 
a jealous fool ; by the fate of Macbeth, whose wife pushed him into massacre ; 
by the fate of Frederick Robertson whose wife mocked his distresses while 



360 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



writhing on the floor in spinal disease; by the fate of James Ferguson the 
philosopher, whose wife entered the room while he was lecturing, and will- 
fully upset his astronomical apparatus, so that he turned to the audience and 
said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I have the misfortune to be married to this 
woman;' by the fate of Bulwer the novelist, whose wife's temper was so 
'incompatible,' he furnished her a beautiful house near London and withdrew 
from her company, leaving her with the one dozen dogs whom she enter- 
tained as pets ; by the fate of John Milton, who married a termagant, after he 
was blind, and when some one called her a rose, the poet said, 'I am no judge 
of colors, and it may be so, for I feel the thorns daily;' by the fate of an 
Englishman, whose wife was so determined to dance on his grave that he 
was buried in the sea ; by the fate of the village minister whom I knew whose 
wife threw a cup of hot tea across the table because they differed in sentiment 
— ^by all these scenes of disquietude and domestic calamity we implore you 
to be cautious and prayerful before you enter upon the connubial state which 
decides whether a man shall have two heavens or two hells, a heaven here and 
heaven forever, or a hell now and a hell hereafter. By the bliss of Pliny 
whose wife, when her husband was pleading in court, had messengers coming 
and going to inform her what impression he was making; by the joy of 
Grotius whose wife delivered him from prison under the pretense of having 
books carried out lest they be injurious to his health, she sending out her 
husband unobserved in one of the book cases ; by the good fortune of Roland 
in Louis' time, his wife translating and composing for her husband while 
secretary of the interior — ^talented, heroic, wonderful Madame Roland; by 
the happiness of many a man who has made intelligent choice of one capable 
of being prime counselor and companion, in brightness and in grief, pray to 
Almighty God morning, noon and night that at the right time and in the right 
way He will send you a good, honest, loving, sympathetic wife; or if she is 
not sent to you, that you may be sent to her. 

"Adam's wife came to him while he was sound asleep, but the probability is 
that you will overtake yours when wide awake. Decide not so important a 
matter by the color of a bright cheek. As well purchase a farm for the 
dahlias in the door yard. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



361 



THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAIH). 

"It is easier for a man to find a good wife than for a woman to find a 
good husband. This is a matter of arithmetic. There are very many more 
women than men. Statistics show that in Massachusetts and New York 
States women have a majority of hundreds of thousands. Why this is we 
leave others to surmise. It would seem that woman is a favorite with the 
Lord, and that therefore He has made more of that kind. 

'Trom the order of the creation in Paradise it is evident that woman is an 
improved edition of man. But whatever be the reason for it, the fact is 
certain that she who selects a husband has a smaller number of people to 
select from than he who selects a wife. Therefore Avoman ought to be 
especially careful in her choice of life-time companionship. She cannot afford 
to make a mistake. If a man err in his selection he can spend his evenings 
at the club; and dull his sensibilities by tobacco smoke; but woman has no 
club-room for refuge, and would find it difficult to habituate herself to cigars. 

"If a woman make a bad job of marital selection the probability is 
nothing but a funeral can relieve it. Divorce cases in court may interest 
the public, but the love-letters of a married couple are poor reading for 
those who write them. 

TABLE OF THE DOG AND THE CAT. 

"A dog and a cat were once married. But they had lived in wedlock 
only a little while when they began to scratch and bite each other until all 
the dogs and cats of the neighborhood felt scandalized. The cat was advised 
by some of her friends, convened, we might say, on the roof of a neighboring 
wood-house, to sue for a divorce in the law courts. Three dogs were on the 
judges' bench — a Newfoundland, a shepherd dog, and a rat-terrier, but the 
Newfoundland presided. The case was called up. The galleries were crowded. 
It seemed that the family difficulty arose about what is the chief aim of life; 
the dog thought the hunting of foxes, and the cat the hunting of rats. While 
the trial was going on all the dogs and cats of the community neglected their 
work, and the foxes destroyed the chickens, and the rats despoiled the pantries. 

"A large amount of correspondence between the two litigants was pro- 



362 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 



duced and read. Private matters became public property. The daily papers 
had extra sale. The whole town laughed, and was demoralized. Both cat 
and dog were ruined in reputation. The jury, made up of six dogs and sbi 
cats who had not expressed any opinion on the subject previous to the 
trial, were charged by the great Newfoundland that if they found the dog 
guilty they must bring in a verdict for the cat; but if, on the other hand, 
they found the cat guilty they must bring in a verdict for the dog. After 
being in a room together, in which the jury fought like cats and dogs, they 
brought in a verdict that because of disparity in temper and incompatibility of 
disposition cats and dogs ought never to be married. 

MABRIAGE NOT A REFORMATORY. 

"Our advice in the selection of a husband is never to marry a man with 
the idea of reforming him. If now, under the restraint of courtship, he will 
not give up his bad habits, after he has won the prize you cannot expect him 
to do so. You might as well plant a violet in the face of a northeast storm 
with the idea of appeasing it; you might as well run a schooner alongside 
of a burning ship with the idea of saving the ship. The consequence will be 
schooner and ship will be destroyed together. The alms-house could tell 
the story of a hundred women who married men to reform them. If by 
twenty-five years of age a man has been grappled by intoxicants he is under 
such headway that your attempt to stop him would be very much like running 
up a track with a wheelbarrow to stop a Hudson River express train. 

"What you call an inebriate nowadays is not a victim of wine or whisky, 
but of logwood and strychnine and nux vomica. All these poisons have 
kindled their fires in his tongue and brain, and all the tears of a wife's weeping 
cannot extinguish the flames. 

"Instead of marrying a man to reform^ him, let him reform first, and then 
give him time to see whether the reform is to be permanent. Let him under- 
stand that if he cannot do without his bad habits for two years, he must do 
without you forever. 

"We advise also that you marry a man who has a fortune in himself. 
Houses, lands, and large inheritance are well enough, but the wheel of for- 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



363 



tune turns so rapidly that through some investment all these in a few years 
may be gone. 

RICHES THAT ARE IMPERISHABLEl 

"There are some things, however, that are a perpetual fortune. Good 
manners, geniality of soul, kindness, intelligence, sympathy, courage, perse- 
verance, industry and whole-heartedness. Marry such an one and you have 
married a fortune, whether he have an income now of fifty thousand dollars 
a year or of one thousand. A bank is secure according to its capital stock, 
and not to be judged by the deposits for a day or a week. A man is rich 
according to his sterling qualities, and not according to the vacillation of 
circumstances, which may leave with him a large amount of resources to-day, 
and withdraw them to-morrow. 

"If a man is worth nothing but money, he is poor indeed. If a man have 
upright character he is rich. Property may come and go ; he is independent 
of the markets. Nothing can buy him out. Nothing can sell him out. He 
may have more money one year than another, but his better fortunes never 
vacillate. 

"We counsel you not to marry a perfect man. If you find one without 
any faults, incapable of mistakes, never having guessed wrongly, his patience 
never having been perturbed, immaculate in speech, in temper, in habits, in 
life, do not marry him. Why? Because you would enact a swindle. What 
would you do with a perfect man? You are not perfect yourself, and how 
dare you hitch your imperfection fast on such supernatural excellence? 

NOT COMPANIONS FOR ANGELS. 

"What a companion you would make for an angel! He would not stay 
an angel long. You would some day make him lose his patience, and then 
his faultlessness would vanish. In other words there are no perfect men. 
Never was but one perfect pair and they slipped down the banks of Paradise 
together. We occasionally find a man who says he never sins. We know he 
lies when he says it. We have had financial dealings with two or three perfect 
men, and they cheated us. Do not, therefore, look for an immaculate hus- 



364 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 



band, for you will not find him. While you are thinking he is perfect he will 
some day, while in a great hurry to meet an engagement, find a shirt-button off 
and your delusion concerning him will break, or he will find that one of the 
children has been sharpening slate-pencils with his razor. 

"Let me tell women that there are no perfect men. We have been much 
among men and understand the whole tribe. On a clear morning when they 
are well-dressed, and the road is clean they look admirably, but none of them 
enjoy having a passing vehicle splash mud on their newly-blackened boots. 
None of them look amiable when a tobacco-chewer spits against the wind and 
the yellow expectoration blows on their clean linen. None of them look placid 
when some one treads on their sore corns. 

"If you want to find out that no man is perfect just marry him. But I 
think that the two sexes, laying all sentimentalism aside, are about equal. If 
you secure for life the companionship of some one about as good as yourself 
you are to be congratulated. 

"Better have the two blades of a scissors as near as possible alike. Get 
married, but with your eyes wide open. Remember the old proverb: *You 
have tied a knot with your tongue you cannot undo with your teeth.' 

THE HONEYMOON. 

"The bride at first turns pale, and then a lovely blush colors her cheeks. 
It is very becoming. Tears moisten her downcast eyes, but they are quickly 
chased by smiles. 7 wilV is uttered in a reverential voice, and lo ! her new 
name is written. Where? — in heaven, or in the sand? 

"Father and mother, and brothers and sisters, gather around her to say 
good-bye, feeling that now her fate is sealed, and that she is going away 
forever — for nevermore will she be the same to them — going away with a 
look of hope and timid joy upon her youthful face to spend the honeymoon — 
that period which is supposed to be of unalloyed joy, unmitigated sweetness. 

"The honeymoon is defined as the first month after marriage. This is the 
literal interpretation of it, but another rendering might be given. 

"The cheerful yielding to each other's foibles; the glowing appreciation 
of each other's virtues; the holy commingling of the hearts of husband and 
wife, make the honeymoon of married life. And thus the orange blossoms 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



365 



may long retain their fragrance and purity, and diffuse a heavenly odor 
through the house. 

"Love promises much in its early spring ! In the billing and cooing time 
— during the honeymoon — everything is couleur de rose. There is no display 
of ill-temper, no sulks, no contradictions. Indeed no ! She is an angel, and 
where she is is paradise ; he is her protector to cling to, her God to worship. 
The lover is not yet lost in the husband — the fascinating girl in the wife; 
the little acts of politeness and kindness, the sweet words and glances of love, 
that made up courtship still continue. 

"Unselfishness is no more a burden to the husband than to the lover; 
and to please is no greater effort to the wife than to the 'bewitching girl.' He 
does not forget his wooing ways; she does not forget her winsome smiles. 
There is not a single offensive 1 will/ or 1 will not' — all is concord and 
confidence. 

"What a blessed thing it is for you, young wife, that this delightful state 
of things is not necessarily limited to time! 

"Why, if the honey sweet were only to last but for one fleeting moon, you 
might well despair. 

"Even Love has its laws; and the newly married wife is wise who is 
governed by them — who is content *to let well enough alone,' and not expect 
too much. 

"Love's flame is almost too delicate for a perpetual household lamp — it 
will burn dim, and finally go out, if not skillfully trimmed. 

"It does not require a long honeymoon to distinguish between a mere 
fancy — ^born of accident or the strong necessity of loving — and a deeply rooted 
affection. Taults are thick where love is thin,' and Love's perceptions are 
as quick as lightning. 

"The little winged Cupids are well enough — on valentines — but they do 
no every-day work. Human hands must do that ; and if young people would 
remember some of the old proverbs, such as 'Before you marry have where 
to tarry,' etc., there would be fewer unhappy honeymoons. 

"Young lovers, pray do not imagine that when you marry your happiness 
is secured for life. 



366 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



" 'As well expect eternal sunshine, cloudless skies.' 

'The real 'hard pan' facts are that you will find your trials doubled. But 
do not be discouraged, for it will depend entirely upon yourselves whether 
your joys are increased. 

"It is therefore a matter of the utmost importance that you should know 
the best way to secure a continuance of the honeymoon. The girl's period of 
courtship is generally a delightful one. Why ? Because there is a conscious- 
ness of mutual love and esteem. 

TO RETAIN HUSBAND'S LOVE. 

"Now, it is comparatively easy for a pretty girl to win a lover, but it is 
much more difficult to retain his affections when he- is merged into a hus- 
band. 

"What sensible fellow will fall in love with a sour, sulky girl, even if she 
happens to have a Grecian profile, knowing her to be such ? It is the opposite 
qualities which he sees, or thinks that he sees, which determine his choice. 

"Therefore, girls, be careful not to give your Apollo the least chance of 
changing his mind about you — or awake from a blissful dream of future hap- 
piness, of which you are the sun and center — ^because he has discovered some 
disagreeable traits of character which had formerly escaped his observation. 

"Be prudent or cunning enough to hide your faults, or, better still, give 
them up altogether — and take a new and high standard — for it is pretty certain 
that the happiness of after years depends upon your conduct during the honey- 
moon. Never fear — you can do it, too — and what more appropriate time 
could you have? 

"It is said that Svoman has a fiber more in the heart, and a cell less in the 
brain than man' — ^but her penetration is intuitive. By a glance of her eye, 
she will form a just and deep conclusion. 

"Ask her how she formed it, and probably she cannot answer the question. 
Therefore, she must soon perceive the faults and follies of her young hus- 
band, long before the honeymoon is supposed to be over, and if she is wise, 
she will strive against disenchantment, by reflecting that there is no one per- 
fect, and that she took him for 'better or for worse.' 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 



367 



"Moreover, she will do well to remember that reproaches will only confirm 
him in error, and that his affection for her will not be increased by her knowl- 
edge of his peccadilloes. 

"And so the true, loyal, loving young wife will early conform herself to 
circumstances, and no amount of sacrifice on her part will be too great to 
indelibly iix the too often fleeting delights of the honeymoon. 

"But it must not be supposed that the young wife must make all, and the 
husband no sacrifice to promote conjugal felicity. He must not ignore or 
forget the fact that she has left all, and followed him through evil or good 
report. He is to point to heaven, and lead the way. 

"What a dull plodder he must be who indulges in no castle-building or 
romance — who does not wish his honeymoon to go on ad infinitum, or who 
does not feel that 

" 'She is mine own, 
And I am rich in having such a jewel.' 

"But, young husband, please do not fancy thine 'other self* a pretty toy 
to be carelessly thrown aside after the honeymoon. She is yours in the 
divinely appointed way, of 'earthly good, the best,' and it is your duty as 
well as privilege to cherish her as 'bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh/ 
and if during the happy honeymoon, 

" 'All day, like some sweet bird, content to sing 
In its small cage, she moveth to and fro — 
And ever and anon will upward spring 
To her sweet lips, fresh from the fount below, 
The murmured melody of pleasant thoughts,' 

it is yours to try, at least, to keep your bird singing joyous melodies, to cheer 
your path through life, which at the best will be rugged enough, heaven 
knows. 

"Let both husband and wife remember that there is much in the poetry 
of life, and that a daily attention to slight courtesies, a cheerfulness of assent 
to slight wishes, an habitual respect to opinions, an unwavering attention 
to each other's comfort at home or abroad, and, above all, propriety of con- 



368 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 



versation and manner in private as in public, is the secret talisman, which, if 
faithfully practiced, will make wedded life one long, happy, golden honey- 
moon. 

HOUSEKEEPING. 

"The honeymoon supposed to be over, and high-flown sentimentality hav- 
ing been succeeded by a calm content, the newly-married couple usually settle 
down to housekeeping. 

"The young husband has by this time found that he has married a woman 
of the ordinary type, 

" 'Not too good for human nature's daily food,' 

and the young wife, too, is dimly suspicious that her Adonis needs *manag- 
ing,' for verily, in the familiarity of home-life, the soul is in dishabille. 

"It now becomes their bounden duty to find out the great secret of married 
life, how to keep their affection for each other, not only alive, but green and 
thrifty. 

"SHALIi WE BQABD OR KEEP HOUSE P" 

"Shall we board or keep house? is a question often discussed nowadays. 

"It is a natural instinct of humanity to wish for a home — one's own, and 
not another's. We desire our child to have pleasant reminiscences of a com- 
fortable home-nest, just as we enjoyed ours, in the halcyon days of boyhood 
or girlhood. 

"Milton tells us, and of course he knew, that Adam and Eve had very 
little wherewith to begin housekeeping; they had room enough, to be sure, 
but in our day, in cities that must necessarily be limited — still a home^ in its 
widest, holiest sense, may be founded by an earnest young couple, even if it is 
begun in a 'flat.' 

"Keeping the house properly and systematically embraces a wide range 
for consideration; but the chief point is to have the home comfortable and 
attractive to the bread-winner, and at the same time give the busy house-wife 
time for needed rest and recreation, so that it will not become an 'elephant,' 
mighty for drudgery. 

"To accomplish this successfully, the inexperienced wife must not be 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



369 



ashamed to learn, even in the humblest way — the old colored washer-woman, 
the baker or grocer's wife — any one experienced in the details of domestic 
life may become her teacher, and doubtless she will be surprised to find how 
much is to be learned outside of books. 

"It is a deplorable fact that school or shop girls, or even overmuch 
indulged daughters just launched into matrimony, are quite helpless as regards 
house-wifery duties, and it is rarely that one of them can cook an appetizing 
beefsteak, or boil a potato properly. 

''It is essential then that the young wife learn how best to keep alive her 
husband's esteem by catering to his stomach in the most approved manner. 
Let her not be discouraged by a few failures — experience cures all mistakes, 
and willing hands soon acquire the knack of turning out good bakes, boils, 
and stews. 

"In the management of household affairs, it is wise to combine health, 
economy and taste. If the meat is cooked to a nicety, and the pudding tooth- 
some, do not forget the details of the table furniture, for a soiled cloth and 
an untidy, ill-arranged table is a disgrace to any housekeeper, and for sweet 
health's sake, remember that a single dish served with skill and taste is worth 
a dozen badly cooked. 

"Taste also should play an important part in the role of the young house- 
wife. Refinement is not luxury — it is always closely united with simplicity, 
and a tasteful employment of the means at command. 

"Every wife is called to the ministry, with a Divine call too, and it is not 
a narrow nor limited one, even with a husband for its object. 

"Herself a learner, she also has a mission to teach, and our word for it, 
such an one will not be a dawdler through life, all who enter her doors will 
see that 'cleanliness is next to godliness,' that 'she looketh well to her house- 
hold and eateth not the bread of idleness.' 

*'We read of floods of rosy light glancing upon rich curtams and gilded 
picture frames, and falling like a sunset gleam upon the damask tablecloth 
spread for supper, with its array of fine china and sparkling glass — this is 
luxuriance suggesting comfort of a kind that all are not fortunate enough 
to possess. Yet we dare affirm that not one who reads these pages but can 



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LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 



make home attractive to her *gude man/ however humble it may be, for it 
may at least be kept in a delightful state of odorous cleanliness, not by 'fits and 
starts/ but every day of the week. There are but few wives in middling 
circumstances who cannot adorn and brighten their houses with inexpensive 
elegances of home manufacture, knick-knacks combining the useful and the 
ornamental. 

ECONOMY IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 

*The subject of economy in the household is almost endless. 

"A wise young husband once said to his mother, 'You have had a varied 
experience — tell me — how can I manage to save something for a rainy day? 
So much is needed that even with economy my salary is insufficient to supply 
our wants.' 

" Then supply your needs and not your wants' said she. *When you 
receive your monthly wages, confer with your wife, this is your duty and 
her right. Make up your account for rent, food and fuel. Then find out 
what she needs, then what is necessary for yourself, the surplus, be it little 
or much, put by for a rainy day.' 

"He followed her advice strictly, and thus they lived within their means 
and prospered. His wife knew just how much she could afford to spend for 
personal comfort and adornment, and being a sensible woman, she made the 
best and the most of it — and doubtless there was a vast amount of worry and 
mutual recrimination saved, as well. 

''We are told that the home is a typical heaven. Perhaps the bright eyes 
of some pretty young housekeeper may linger admiringly upon Tom Moore's 
lines, when he says : 

" 'And when anger — for e'en in the tranquilest climes 
The breezes will ruffle the blossoms sometimes — 
The short passing anger but seemed to awaken 
New beauty, like flowers that are sweetest when shaken.' 

"This is poetry, but the sentiment is all 'bosh.' If you believe that there 
is any beauty whatever in a fit of spunk or sulks, just look in the mirror the 
next time you 'get mad' with your John. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



371 



"The Good Book says, 'Anger resteth in the bosom of fools' — and even 
if your particular darling never even heard of that text, he knows as much 
about it as Solomon did — so don't give him a chance to think that you are a 
fool ; remember that, 

'A something light as air — a look, 
A word unkind or roughly taken — 
- Oh! love that tempests never shook, 
A breath, a touch like this hath shaken.' 

WISE AS SOLOMON. 

"But what has'this to do with housekeeping? one says. Everything for 
housekeeping means something more than getting up dinners, washing dishes 
and sweeping — it means social converse as well — and habitual ill-temper spoils 
this, for it is an effectual damper to cheerfulness, and the poor victim knows 
not when or how the spirit of evil may burst forth, and it is a terrible strain 
to be always watching, lest it come unawares. 

"Any man of common sense prefers a sweet long-suffering patience, in the 
queen of his household, to mere personal beauty — beauty soon fades with the 
wear and tear of life — but the 'ornament of a quiet spirit' is above price." 

Surely there is the wisdom of Solomon in these suggestions. How tame 
and unprofitable the usual essays on "How to Make Home Happy" beside 
these real vital truths. Talmage knew the human heart as few men have 
known it and wrote and spoke directly to it, no matter what his subject. 
These views on domestic life are among the best of his utterances, for here 
he is a simple, earnest human being, studying the here and to-day, rather 
than the yonder and the to-morrow. There is happiness in following his 
teachings on the subject of living happiness at hand. It don't need to be 
waited for in some mystic heaven, however glorious the vision of that may be. 

In another essay he deals with the feeling of the father for his first born. 
How tender and gentle it is. He says : 

THE FIBST BABY. 

''Observe that young husband as he goes down town to begin his daily 
routine of duties. He meets a poorly clad woman carrying a small bundle — 



372 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 



is it a bachelor's clothes for the wash? No. He knows better — he knows 
that wrapped up in that old shawl so carefully, is a mite of humanity — a 
baby — and he looks at the mother kindly. 

"There is a softened expression in his eyes, and a certain elasticity in his 
tread as he walks on, and there is also a self-conscious 'congratulate me' sort 
of a manner in his cheery greetings that particular mornii^g. 

''Oh ! it is plain that he is the happy father of a 'first baby.* 

"The hours seem leaden winged, so impatient is he to return to the nest. 
At last he reaches home — ^that little world over which he is monarch. He 
bounds up the stairs — two steps at a time, but he misses the accustomed kiss — 
for this time he is met by his mother-in-law advancing on tiptoe, and wearing 
an anxious expression, and a slight frown, as she puts her finger on her lips, 
as a cautionary signal, whispering: 

" 'Hush ! hush ! Baby's asleep !' 

" 'Who does the baby look like?' 

"This is the first question asked by the uncles, aunts and cousins. 

"Some people think that all babies look alike — old bachelors and old 
maids, perhaps, but the parents know better — they are of the opinion that 
their darling is 'too handsome for anything,' and would take the first prize 
at any baby show in creation. 

GREAT DEAL IN A NAME. 

" 'What's in a name ?' some one aptly says. A great deal for a baby. 
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are very well for Christian martyrs in 'ye 
olden time,' but not one of them would do for a baby-show — they could not 
by any means be twisted into pet names. 

"The little 'tootsy-wootsy' must have endearing titles — to be laid aside, 
however, as the years roll on. 

"Names are generally given in memory of some one gone before, or to 
perpetuate the particular family name. 

"Baby's first exploit — after creeping — is to climb up by a chair and push 
it before him — and with what an air of triumph the little toddler, after re- 
peated failures, and sundry troubles, succeeds in walking by its help — and, 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



373 



growing bolder, at last starts off alone, and unsupported, on the long voyage 
of life. 

"Courage, little one ! Thou must meet with many a fall by the way, but 
press on ; God helping thee, thou mayest win. 

''The first tooth! Poor baby. Through much tribulation, those little 
'toothies,' which cause a mother so much anxiety — are given thee. Not all at 
once, but, mercifully, at intervals. And oh ! it is a blessed rest time both for 
baby and her, when those troublesome white molars are ready for 'strong 
meat.' 

"Babies sometimes talk before they walk, but it is said that it is only girls 
who do this ! The baby dialect is generally unintelligible ; father and mother 
however, quickly learn it, and then the endearing pet names and baby talk 
commence. Happy is the young husband and wife who are privileged enough 
to understand and appreciate the prattle of their first 'baby.' 

"Generally, father prefers a boy, mother a girl, grandmother gratefully 
accepts this 'gift from heaven/ and forthwith proceeds to spoil it. 

"Why? Ah! This is a problem. Having cuffed and whipped baby's papa 
and mamma to her heart's content, she is now disposed to petting, she has 
probably grown wiser and more patient. To her the new-comer represents 
her own first-born, of the long time ago, and she loves it almost as fondly. 

"It has been said that 'a baby in the home is a well-spring of joy.' True, 
at its advent there must be no more slamming of doors, no more inopportune 
coughing, and even a sneeze must be suppressed at all hazards, and the im- 
pressible bit of clay becomes a veritable household tyrant. Even the *cun- 
ningest' baby in the world will assert his rights loudly and persistently, and 
pull hair and whiskers with impunity. What then? Does any one wish to 
resent it? No! on the contrary, the little cherub is almost smothered with 
kisses. 

" 'Tis well that the first baby brings love with it ; the tender mother love 
best of all, and the sympathy that is excited by its very helplessness. The 
house containing a live baby is necessarily a wide-awake house, for its in- 
mates are enlisted in its service, and their energies are taxed to the utmost; 
for the care of a cross, crying baby is no sinecure, but the mother never tires 



374 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 



in her labor of love. Oh ! who can measure it in the weary vigils, in the 
anxious hours spent in battling with measles, whooping cough, and the 
numerous ills peculiar to babydom, that fall to her share in that blessed, blessed 
baby! 

"And oh ! proud father, you too must bow before the household idol ; you 
too must share the responsibility. What! expect an unbroken night's rest, 
and calm and peaceful slumbers, expect not to hear the midnight music of the 
little one! Fatal delusion! Uneasy lies the head who owns a baby, so be 
ready, like a good soldier, to turn out at a moment's notice, and do not 
ingloriously shirk — well — anything in that line of duty. 

"What matter if you seem to be number two, and are a bit jealous because 
baby monopolizes too much attention ? What are you going to do about it ? 
Why ; love it all the more, to be sure, and do not be ashamed to let folks know 
that you do ! Why should you not ? You are the richer, for it furnishes an 
additional incentive to toil, and bright hopes, and charming pictures of home 
comfort, and future activities cluster around the pretty occupant of the new 
cradle. 

" 'A babe is a blessing,' says the Good Book ; all are not thus blessed, 
and not a few will envy you your treasure. 

"A baby is an educator too; it teaches the young husband and wife how 
like to children they should be, how pure in heart, how simple and sincere; 
their souls receiving new strength from this bond of sympathy, they will 
love themselves last. They will be more forbearing to each other, more ready 
to sacrifice, more loving, tender and true. Oh, there is one affection which 
no stain of earth can ever darken — a mother's love for her first baby.'* 

THE SAME OLD WORU). 

Dr. Talmage declared that the mistakes of young people just entering 
upon the active duties of life generally proceed from ignorance and thought- 
lessness — the fashionable daughter as well as the toiling shop girl — needing 
a friendly jog on the elbow, and a helping hand to point out the rough places 
on the journey. 

"We have been given some charming pictures of the past, to remind us 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



375 



that all down through the ages human nature has been the same, indulging 
in day-dreams, hoping, loving, and erring. Rebecca at the well, Rachel smil- 
ing on her lover as he labored for love of her in her father's fields, and Ruth 
sitting at sunset with the reapers, and taking the parched corn from the hand 
of Boaz. Yes, this is the same beautiful world that they enjoyed, with in- 
numerable bits of brightness in it to be had for the seeking." 

Dr. Talmage closes this significant essay with a warning to both you*^g 
men and women to choose mates from those who are possessed of those 'Equali- 
ties which were," and to learn that a calm friendship based on esteem is more 
to be depended upon than rhapsodies and passionate vows which soon burn 
out in their own flame. And then that no one may misunderstand him, he 
says : ''There is nothing truer than that beautiful thought of the poet : 

" 'He liveth best, who loveth best 
All things, both great and small.' " 

THE FOLLY OF FLIHTATION. 

"Beware of the pretty and modest coquette," cries the wise doctor to the 
young man, "or you will be bewitched before you know it. Be wide awake or 
she will fool you. The swift motion of a deep stream, moving without a 
perceptible ripple, is not more delusive than the captivating smiles and honeyed 
words of the lovely swindler. 

"When you thought that you had touched a chord in another's heart, which 
had never before thrilled to love's music, when the dear lips, though mute, 
were yet eloquent, when the sweet, earnest words of love were trembling on 
your lips. Then to be rudely awakened, to find that your holiest affections 
had been trifled with, that you had been scorned, deceived and jilted. Oh! 
what bitter mortification and pain were yours. 

"A friend kindly whispers to you, 'What woman is so fair that another 
may not be as fair?' But you refuse to be comforted, you rail at the whole 
sex, they are all alike — every one, you will never again be bamboozled by the 
deceitful creatures and thus you remain a miserable woman-hater. 

"But as time rolls on, nature — or another woman — works a cure. The 
scars of the hard-fought battle may remain, but, grown wiser, you exclaim : 



376 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



" When I see 

Love givin' to rove, 
To two, or three. 
Then good-bye, Love, 
If Love can sigh 
For one alone. 
Well pleased am I 
To be that one.' 

"Alas! it does not always follow that a cure is effectual; the wound of 
that 'pretty trifling' often strikes deeper, and the unhappy victim never recov- 
ers from it, for love scorned 'doth work madness in the brain.' 

"Oh, the folly of flirtation. 

" 'Such is your cold coquette^ who can't say "no," 
And won't say "yes," and keeps you on and offing 
On a lee shore, till it begins to blow ; 
Then sees your heart wrecked with an inward scoffing. 
This works a world of sentimental woe. 
And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin.' 

"But what sort of a being is this formidable coquette, who thus trifles 
with the best feelings of a man's heart, who drives him into dissipation, and 
even to suicide, and then calls it innocent flirtation? 

A COQUETTE DEFINED. 

"A coquette is defined by the best authorities, as a vain, airy, trifling girl, 
who endeavors to attract admiration from a desire to gratify vanity, and then 
rejects her lover. 

"She treats him with an appearance of favor, but with a design to deceive. 
She knows her power over him, and delights to exercise it. In the world's 
parlance she 'leads him on.' 

"Sometimes a systematic flirt is caught in her own cunning device. She 
learns to love, and is slighted in her turn by the object of it. She may flirt, 
too, with a worthy object, and place her affections upon an unworthy one." 

Dr. Talmage has discovered that there are male, as well as female flirts, 
and is quite as severe on them. "Male flirts ? Yea, verily. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



377 



" *By all the vows that lover ever broke 
In numbers more that woman ever spoke 

But as long as the trifling danglers are smiled upon and encouraged by 
honorable young men, just so long they will continue to be the pests of 
society, and wickedly break confiding hearts. 

Dr. Talmage believed in the cultivation of the mind through actual exer- 
tion for the purpose of giving material form to some creation of the brain. 
His idea seemed to be that "thoughts unexpressed must fall back dead;" that 
unless words were spoken or penned, inventions modeled and put in action, 
they were as if they had never been. In his essay on ''A Young Woman's 
Education" he says : "A girl is apt to imagine that her education is finished 
when she leaves school, when, in fact, it has just begun. Schooling is but 
the foundation. As the busy bee seeks honey from every opening flower, so 
a wise girl will improve every opportunity to gain knowledge, for education 
includes many things outside of what is taught in schools." A young 
woman's calling is not the limited one that narrow minds conceive it to be. 
Life is full of noble opportunities for her, and it is her bounden duty to edu- 
cate herself to meet them and not allow herself to drift into an aimless exist- 
ence. The maiden whose horizon is bounded by 'the coming man' can have 
a purpose in life whether she ever meets him or not. 'A young woman is 
not thoroughly educated unless she can sew. She may be an adept at music 
and dancing, and understand many languages, but if her fingers cannot put 
together a garment deftly, or if they have no skill for fine touches with the 
needle, she is indeed sadly deficient." 

TALMAGE ON EDUCATION. 

Dr. Talmage said that every young woman, as well as every young man, 
should have an education that would make her self-sustaining. ''She should 
have some educated talent, or trade, if you please, at her bidding to fall back 
upon in case of emergency, for in our day of push and hurry fortunes are 
made and lost quickly, and possibly she may become a burden on some one, 
and then, to avoid this, may marry unadvisedly to better herself." 

He advised every one to cultivate assiduously whatever they had a de- 



378 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



cided liking for. Young women living in some style and much social en- 
joyment, refined daughters of families in middling circumstances, had been 
instructed in dressmaking and millinery and were thus enabled to make their 
own dresses and bonnets, relieving them of the necessity of employing a 
modiste, and being forced to "pinch" in other quarters. He believed that 
young women should be required absolutely and unconditionally to know 
something of physiology, and especially o-f hygiene, or the art of preserving 
and prolonging life. She should have a general knowledge of medical science 
in her capacity of daughter, wife and mother, and to help her fulfill her va- 
rious duties as a responsible member of society. 

Dr. Talmage had great respect for readiness. Presence of mind he held 
to be a necessary adjunct toi a young v/oman's training. "Not to be ready 
at the moment of emergency or trial," he says, "to be but dimly conscious 
of one's own faculties, to be too timid or too nervous to call them into requi- 
sition when wanted, when perhaps a life is trembling in the balance, will 
cause a future of self-accusation and repining, while a neglect to educate one's 
self to this kind of self-control cannot be too severely censured. 

"Cooking has become one of the fine arts. There are but few Juliet 
Corsons, but every young woman can learn the best methods of preparing 
wholesome food. She can be taught in this particular branch of womanly 
duty — ^not to guess at weights and measures, nor to mix at haphazard- — but 
to work intelligently ; to know the why and wherefores of her doing. 

"Some knowledge of the details of business, hitherto deemed- a man's pre- 
rogative, will be useful to a woman, either as maiden, wife or widow ; happily 
there is a growing desire to be taught in this direction. 

"The golden opportunities which girls have for reading, for securing the 
best thoughts of the best minds, are seldom appreciated until it is too late 
to repair thie error. Utilizing the knowledge to be derived from books, while 
the memory is active, and before the cares of life press too heavily, will prove 
a girl to be possessed of sound and common sense. 

"The words that fall broadcast from the mother's lips should be pure, 
simple words, so that her daughters can gather them up for a life's use. It 
is painful to listen to the conversation of some young women, mixed as it is 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



379 



with slang phrases, ungrammatical expressions and numberless superlatives. 

''Wherever a young girl is there should be a sweet, wholesome atmosphere 
of purity, love and truth, pervading, influencing and educating the entire 
circle in which she moves. 

"Never think that your education is finished, or even near being so, my 
dear girl ; one is never too old to learn. Toi be sure, all are not 'cut out' for 
great deeds ; some must creep where others fly, and some people's 'fingers are 
all thumbs,' but yoii can live for something. There are abundant opportuni- 
ties for self culture, for social enjoyment, and for charitable effort, if you so 
ordain. 

"The signs of the times in regard to the education o^f young women are 
full of cheer. They give promise of a more generous culture, larger views, 
and more kindly tolerance in the future among all classes of society." 

A YOUNG MAN'S EDUCATION. 

Dr. Talmage knew that many young men were obliged to leave school too 
soon — earlier than a son and heir of wealth — in order to learn a trade, or 
follow some humble calling. 

"Your stock of ideas is small to begin with," he says, "a mere rudimentary 
knowledge; you know but little of life — less of yourself; your heart is full of 
various impulses and restless cravings for some imaginary good or evil, and 
even though you have left school, your education is but just begun. 

"It makes no difference what your station or calling in life is, you need 
an education ; even if it happen to be of the lowest grade, you had better be 
educated, for intelligence elevates every calling — even that of street sweeping. 
Bear in mind at the start that ignorance is disreputable! Nay, it is a crime 
almost in our day of grand opportunities. Ignorance, depravity and vul- 
garity are three birds of ill omen that flock together. 

"It is a mistake to suppose that knowledge is the prerogative of wealth 
or leisure, or even of the professions; every young man may educate him- 
self. Think of the noble army of self-made men, scattered broadcast over 
the world, who have in the workshop snatched precious moments to hoard 
precious thoughts — who have devoted their spare hours to close study — who 



'380 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



have, even in slave life, stolen away, although in fear of punishment, to trace 
the letters of the alphabet, with no better pencil than a rough stick — of those, 
who thus gaining knowledge step by step, have at last enriched the world. 
Does not your heart leap and your pulses thrill with a noble ambition to 
emulate such earnest endeavor? 

'To be sure, not every young man is a genius, with a superior intellect; 
but even genius needs industry to develop it, and it is a fatal mistake to trust 
to that lazy man's refuge — luck! 

*'N"o! In order to bring out talent one must be perseveringly industrious. 
To derive benefit from books needs industry, and there is an infinite variety of 
ways of making a man of you, but all need painstaking industry, and may 
well be included in your education. 

^'Perhaps you have already been puzzling your brain as to the best methods 
of attaining to a noble manhood, and there has been a croak from a favorite 
companion lest you should no longer be a 'good fellow,' and perhaps sneers 
and ridicule, too, at your idea of elevating yourself. A companion of this 
sort would in one-half hour undo the education of years. 

*'COirSENT THOXr NOT." 

"A boy of fifteen once asked his mother to give him a motto or text that 
would be of practical service through life, one that he could associate with 
"herself, bind upon his heart and write upon the palms of his hands, ready 
for use at a moment's emergency. 

" 'I know of none better for a talisman than this,' she replied : * "My son, 
w^hen sinners entice thee, consent thou not." ' 

"The first step leads to the last, and there come words of warning to you, 
rolling down from the past, just as true as when first uttered, and you can 
quote them to your croaking, sneering companion if you like. 

" There is a way which seemeth right to man, but the ends thereof are the 
ways of death.' 

"Truly, it is a desirable thing to be able to look every one full in the face, 
not with unblushing effrontery but with a consciousness of rectitude.' " 

Dr. Talmage believed that a young man should educate himself to obe- 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



381 



dience to natural laws, should learn to know how to use himself, and the 
best method of developing robust health. "The idea that none but medical 
men should know anything about physical health has long ago been exploded 
— ^gone to the moles and bats. 

"Profane swearing is to a young man what superlatives are to a girl. 
It is a mere superficial habit — the sooner gotten rid of the better. 

''What would be thought of a gentleman who should rudely and inten- 
tionally tread heavily upon another's corns? 

"So the profane swearer hurts some one's sensitive feelings, and is guilty 
of impoliteness, to say nothing of the irreverence and lowering of the mind's 
moral tone. 

"Cursing is many degrees worse, for it involves evil or harm to some one ; 
of course, the evil does not necessarily follow, and the old saying has it that 
'curses come home to roost ;' but this branch of a young man's education may 
be easily neglected. 

"Loafing on the street corners leads to a near acquaintance with vice of 
many kinds; it leads to late hours, which involves a great loss to a worker 
of nature's restorer, sleep; it introduces you tO' dangerous company, those 
who sneer at purity, who loan you pernicious books, who instruct you in 
wickedness, who use you for wrong-doing, and then leave you to bear the 
consequences alone." 

WHAT CONSTITUTES A GENTLEMAN". 

Dr. Talmage on success for endeavor : 

"The young man of our times is highly favored," he says. "He is not 
obliged to remain in a low or narrow position, if force of circumstances has 
placed him there; he can educate himself out of it. His own acts will, in 
a great measure, determine his course in life ; happily he can elect to aim high 
and then strike a bee-line for it — he can, at least, be a man, even if he cannot 
become a great one. 

" 'When I marry,' said a beautiful young lady, 'it shall be to a gentleman.' 

"What is a gentleman? 

"Washington Irving has given us his idea of one — and he was good 
authority. 



382 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



" *A conscientiousness in regard to duties, an open truthfulness, and ab- 
sence of all low propensities and sensual indulgences, a reverence for sacred 
things, a freedom from selfishness, and a prompt disposition to oblige — and, 
with all these, a gayety of spirits flowing from an uncorrupted heart.' 

"It is to be hoped that the 'coming sweetheart' may find these admirable 
qualities in you! 

"We must not forget that to the young there is beauty in vice, and in 
infinite variety, too. Gambling with its fascinations; intemperance with its 
glib sociability; dishonesty in making haste to be rich; w^e might go on ad 
infinitum with the list oif temptations that will beset a young man — some of 
them, at least, if not all. They will come tOi him., not in all their terrible de- 
formity, not with the full shining light of experience, but hidden by the 
blooming flowers which grow so luxuriantly over the lava of sin. We 
cannot shut his eyes, nor close his ears ; we cannot force him toi be good ; we 
can only utter a heartcry of warning; for he is free to choose, he is free 
to educate himself! 

"A young man's education should comprise a provision for old age. This 
seems a long way ahead ; but time is remorseless, and he will need something 
tangible to fall back upon. If the first steps lead to virtue the last are likely 
to be in the same direction. 

YOUNG MEN SHOULD CHOOSE THEIR COMPANY 

"Every young man should remember that the character which he is to 
sustain through life, and which is to sustain him, is to be formed now — in 
youth — for the habits, principles and manners of the youth are essentially 
those of the man ; hence knowing a man by his company is a truth universally 
received. 

"Thinking, not growth alone, makes manhood. There are some who, 
though they have done growing, are still only boys; they may be excellent 
gymnasts, or winners a^t a walking match, but they do not think — they drift 
— like a rudderless vessel; and are thus at the mercy of bad companions. 
And what a host of them there are — ready to meet every emergency in a 
young man's life whose mind is vacant. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



383 



" 1 do not intend to be led by the nose/ says one. 

"Of course you think so-; a man ought to be able to say no, as well as a 
woman; and not to have a will of one's own renders one ridiculous, even to 
the very persons who lead us. 

"Do not trust to your intentions of rectitude. You will either approve 
or disapprove of bad companions. If you approve, you will imitate them. 
You will become one of them! 

"You must and will have society and friends, but your voluntary choice 
of them proves your own disposition of mind. How vital it is, then, to get 
your mind into proper training to choose wisely — how important it is for you 
to think. 

"The surest guarantee to success is decision of character; and no one 
ever attained to this enviable characteristic without acquiring the habit of 
acting upon fixed principles ; surely, then, the choice of companions must not 
be left to chance or caprice. 

POTENCY or RIDICULE. 

"Of all the arts that will be used to allure you, none will be more potent 
than ridicule. Evil companions never call things by their right names. De- 
bauchery, prodigality and drunkenness they define as 'living like a gentle- 
man,' while economy and sobriety are meanness and 'want of spirit.' 

"Now, it must be conceded that great fortitude is required to remain firm 
in integrity during an onslaught of raillery — and here is a grand opportunity 
to show your courage and good sense under this formidable fire of ridicule. 
If you do not at once fall into this trap and cry, 'Hail fellow, well met — I'm 
with you,' they will dub you a coward, and return to the charge with greater 
temptations — ^and there is danger that by becoming familiar with evil courses 
you will cease to regard them as evil', and by thus ceasing to hate them you 
will soon learn to endure, love and practice them. 

"An habitual loafer, who yet appears respectable, is not a fit companion — 
he is generally ready to pounce upon you from a street corner, to coax you 
on to ruin. In keeping his company you must necessarily loaf also — and 
this will seriously affect your prospects in life, even if you mean well, for an 
observant, prudent man would hardly expect to find an habitual lounger 



384 



LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 



trustworthy. This kind of companion usually lives by his wits; by borrow- 
ing, begging, or getting somehow — and the 'somehow' often leads to the 
gallows. 

'Terhaps some young man has already commenced 'seeing life' under the 
guidance of a rollicking companion ; he is being initiated, and he rather likes 
it ; he seems to be walking in straight and verdant paths strewn with flowers 
— perfumed — melodious with the warbling of birds, and overhung with 
luscious fruit. Let him beware! He is on the devil's highway. And the 
idle, loafing kind of a life leads to lying, obscene conversation, falsely called 
lively sallies oi humor — double entendres, which pass for wit—delight in* 
villainous pictures, gambling, drunkenness, swindling schemes, defaulting, 
burglary, revenge and murder, besides those which are unfit even to men- 
tion here. The reaping of all this sowing is remorse. 

"But we hope better things of you who heed our warning. There is 
happily a brighter side to the relations which a young man may have with 
his companions. Although environed with terrible temptations, you may lead 
an honorable, virtuous life. Take heart, then, for much is expected of you. 
The state needs you; society needs you, and some young woman, a help- 
mate, is waiting for you. 

"If your calling in life is coarse, low or unremunerative, it is not vulgar 
simply because of it; if your externals are humble, make it up inside, and 
if possible associate with your superiors. 

"Seek for the companionship of a disinterested friend. A friend upon 
whose fidelity and counsel you can safely rely in all your difficulties, who will 
console, delight and help you. Be honest. 

"Cultivate, moderately, the society of well-educated young ladies, whose 
genial, refined influence will incline you to goodness and propriety, and value 
their friendship as a privilege. 

"Right living gives a clear conscience, sound health and manliness, 
which is only another name for nobility of soul. 

"Deserving companions minister to your self-respect, they develop the 
good in you, and there is no after pain in the pleasures to which they lead 
you. 'Tell me your company and I'll tell you what you are !' " 



CHAPTER XX. 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 

HIS PURPOSE IN GOING TO WRITE A LIFE OF CHRIST THE JOURNEY ATHENS 

TALMAGE PREACHES ON MARS' HILL, WHERE PAUL ONCE PREACHED 

HOW AND WHERE TALMAGE WROTE "'fROM MANGER TO THRONE"" HE 

BAPTIZES AN AMERICAN IN THE RIVER JORDAN. 

"Others might write a life of Christ without seeing the Holy Land/' says 
Dr. Talmage, ''but I could not." In October, 1889, therefore, he embarked 
for the sacred country accompanied by his wife, daughter and friends, "deter- 
mined," he says, "to see with my own eyes, and press with my own feet many 
of the memorable places connected with the life of the patriarchs and the 
ministrations of our Lord." 

The Doctor had crossed the Atlantic eight times before, but found this 
the smoothest and most sunshiny of all his voyages — all the way to Egypt. 

The Talmage party landed in Patras, Greece, in a small boat "pitching 
till it threatened to capsize," and took the rail train for Corinth and Athens. 

Writing briefly but enthusiastically of Greece, its poets, essayists and 
orators, Talmage reveals a sympathy with classical education which one 
hearing his sermons would not suspect him of having. That sympathy did 
not appear on his platform because it could not aid him in reaching those 
"masses" which he defines as consisting of nine hundred and ninety-nine 
people out of a thousand. "What an opportunity," he exclaimed, "if at the 
close of a college course and before entering a profession, every young man 
could take a journey to see the places vividly associated with the birth^ life 
and the writings of the classic writers! May some philanthropist of large 
means see the opportunity and embrace it for hundreds and- thousands of 
young students!" 

For hundreds it has indeed been embraced since the time of Talmage*s 

38s 



386 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 



visit by means of the American School of Archeology at Athens. The more 
far-reaching plan of Talmage does not seem so Utopian as it did when he 
conceived it, for since then Cecil Rhodes has died and in his will bequeathed 
millions for a not dissimilar project in providing for the education of Ameri- 
can youth in the Enghsh University of Oxford. It is certain that many a 
devout young student of the classics entertains at graduation the ardent desire 
to see 

"The sprinkled isles, 
Lily on lily that o'erlace the sea, 

And laugh their pride where the light wave lisps Greece 

To Talmage naturally the regions in which Paul traveled and sojourned, 
"the Pauline places/' as he calls them, were interesting as a fitting introduc- 
tion to "the Christly places" of Palestine. "The secular classic of the Acrop- 
oHs," says he, "did not move me like the Gospel classic of Mars' Hill. What 
a bold man was Paul to stand there on those tumbled rocks and say what he 
did! I suppose he could have been heard across to the Acropolis, which 
was covered with temples to heathen gods and goddesses." Dr. Talmage 
himself preached on Mars' Hill — the place where Paul had preached. He 
was not oblivious to the picturesqueness of the fact, and records that as he 
stood there his emotion caused the pages of his Bible to flutter — pages upon 
which were written the words of Paul, spoken eighteen hundred years before 
upon that very spot. 

Such intensely dramatic situations as this came naturally into the life of 
Talmage, because his nature was dramatic. People who have nothing 
dramatic in their own souls are seldom placed in a dramatic situation. The 
Doctor obtained a stone from Mars' Hill to be sent to Brooklyn for the pulpit 
table in the Tabernacle which was being for the second time rebuilt, after 
the fire of 1889. 

Another most dramatic episode of Talmage's travels in the Holy Land 
has been alluded to in another place, but here we will let him tell the story 
in his own words: 

"Yesterday on horseback we left Jericho, and having dipped m the Dead 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 



387 



Sea, we came with a feeling we cannot describe upon the Jordan, a river 
which more people have desired to see than any other. On our way we 
overtook an American who requested me to baptize him by immersion in 
the river Jordan. We dismounted at the place where Joshua and his host 
crossed the river dry-shod. We were near a turn in the river and not far ofif 
from where rocks and sands are piled up in shape of cathedrals, domes and 
battlements. We pitched our tent, and after proper examination of the can- 
didate for baptism, I selected portions of Scripture appropriate. One of our 
Arab attendants has a garment not unlike a baptismal robe. With that gar- 
ment girdled around me, I led the candidate down under the trees on the 
bank, while near by were groups of friends and some strangers who happened 
to be there. After a prayer, I read of Christ's baptism in the Jordan, and 
the commission, 'Go teach all nations, baptizing them.' The people on the 
bank then joined in singing to the familiar tune that soul-stirring song, 'On 
Jordan's stormy bank I stand.' With the candidate's hand in mine, we 
waded deep into the Jordan, and I then declared, 'In this historical river, 
where the Israelites crossed, and Naaman plunged seven times for the cure 
of his leprosy, and Christ was baptized, and which has been used in all ages 
as a symbol of the dividing line between earth and heaven, I baptize thee 
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.' 
As the candidate went down under the waves and then rose, I felt a solemnity 
that no other scene could have inspired. As the ordinance was observed 
under the direction of no particular denomination of Christians, and no 
particular church could be responsible for it, I feel it my duty to report 
what I did to the Church Universal." 

For so reporting it we have already said that Talmage was criticised 
and ridiculed by his enemies. We leave each reader to decide from the 
words of the man himself whether or not there was in his act something 
more than a spirit of sensational self-advertisement. There are now no 
other data than these words for determining the question. 

A description of the road to the birthplace of Christ is rendered more 
interesting by being written upon the very road. To enter fully into the 
spirit of the passage one must imagine the traveler sitting with busy pencil 



388 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 



by the wayside "at nine o'clock this crisp December morning, for there was 
a sharp frost last night," writes he. "I am afoot on the road from Jerusalem 
to Bethlehem; I have just crossed the valley of Hinnom. It is deep and 
impressive, a wall of rock on one side and a steep hill on the other, mounting 
toward the Holy City, a few olive trees on the way up as though they had 
climbed as far as they could, and then halted." The comparison is evidently 
that of a man with wearied limbs. 'T pass the plain," he continues, "where 
Absalom marshalled troops against his father David, and the Hill of Evil 
Council, where Judas planned for the capture of Christ. I am on the road 
where the wise men went to find Christ at the order of Herod, men wise 
enough not to make report to the cruel monster. It is the road which 
marks the distance between the birthplace and the deathplace of Jesus." 

In the preface of his book. From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, Tal- 
mage says: "Every day of my journey amid these scenes of Gospel classics, 
I felt regret that I had not seen them many years before, but it was a satis- 
faction to me to find that early in life I had been enabled to form mental 
pictures of them so adequate as to prevent mistakes in my attempts to de- 
scribe them. How much more graphic could I have been, however, had my 
actual observation of them been accompHshed at an early period in my 
ministry! I hope earnestly that the time may come when a visit to Athens 
will be made a part of collegiate education, and a visit to Egypt and the 
Holy Land a part of theological education. Both culture and religion 
would be large gainers by such addition to the means of preparation for a 
useful life." In the sketch of his journey entitled "To, Through, and From 
the Christ-Lands," he repeats this idea. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT HIS GUIDE BOOK 

Talmage found the New Testament the one indispensable guide in his 
visit to the sacred places of the East. "What Bradshaw's Guide is to Eu- 
ropean travelers," he says, "the New Testamxent is to those who would 
walk or sail the places connected with events Paulinian, Johannian, and 
Christly. A prevalent mistake is, that the sacred places are interesting only 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 



389 



because they are Biblical. So far from this being the case, if Moses had 
never led Israel out of Egypt, and if Paul had never been shipwrecked, and 
if John had never been exiled from Patmos, all the places mentioned in this 
book would be absorbing, or inspiring, or solemnizing, or in some way 
mightily suggestive. Such rivers, such seas, such rocks, such archipelagoes! 
But when you add to their natural attractions the holy reminiscences which 
they excite, those places hold you with a power that will never relax." 

Talmage says that there were circumstances which made him peculiarly 
receptive of sacred impressions at the time of his visit to the Biblical regions. 
"A burning church occupied my mind," he says, "ye2i, two burning churches, 
for we had seen two churches in conflagration. My imagination was filled 
with a third church, the ground for which I had broken the last thing before 
taking ship. The vivid memory of tw^o destroyed churches, and the uncer- 
tainties concerning the building of a third church in the same city and under 
the same pastorate, possessed me, and put me in that emotional frame of 
mind the most favorable to religious observation and reflection. What 
I saw and felt I can never fully tell, but this book reproduces vivid mem- 
ories and experiences as I have found my best ability to relate them." 

He somewhat naively asks the prayers of all who know how to pray, for 
the practical usefulness of his work, 'Trom the Pyramids to the Acropolis." 
''No one can foretell what will be the life of a book," he says, "any more 
than what will be the life of an individual." He alludes to the popularity of 
his previously printed work as follows: ''As there is no cessation of the 
generous interest with which the public receive my productions and as there 
seems to be indeed a marvelously increased kindness toward what I write 
and say, I keep on, and now add this little volume to the works which, by 
the goodness of God and the encouragement of the public, I have been 
enabled to send out." 

COMPOSITION OF "FROM MANGER TO THRONE." 

Concerning the composition of the "Life of Christ," alluded to in the 
opening of this chapter, he gives the following account: "In my American 
home, on the Atlantic, on the Mediterranean, on camel's back, on mule's 



390 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND, 



back, on horse-back, under chandelier, by dim candle in tent, on Lake 
Galilee, in convent, at Bethel where Jacob's pillow was stuffed with dreams, 
and the angels of the ladder landed, at the brook Elah, from which little 
David picked up the ammunition of five smooth stones, four more than 
were needed for crushing like an egg-shell the skull of Goliath, in the valley 
of Ajalon, over which, at Joshua's command. Astronomy halted, on the plain 
of Esdraelon, the battlefield of ages, its long red flowers suggestive of the 
blood dashed to the bits of the horses' bridles, amid the shattered masonry 
of Jericho, in Jerusalem that overshadows all other cities in reminiscence, 
at Cana where plain water became festival beverage, on Calvary whose 
aslant and ruptured rocks still show the effects of the earthquake at the 
awful hemorrhage of the five wounds that purchased .the world's rescue, and 
with my hand mittened from the storm, or wet from the Jordan, or bared to 
the sun, or gliding over smooth table, this book has been written." This 
method of dashing it off red-hot gave it a certain spontaneity which is lack- 
ing in more polished periods. It explains also how Talmage was able to 
preach sometimes a sermon a day and at the same time write traveler's 
essays about England, Paris, or the Holy Land. His fecundity was enor- 
mous. The ideal that he proposed for himself was expressed by a stranger 
on the steamer "City of Paris," on which Talmage crossed on his way to the 
Holy Land. Knowing that he was going to write a life of Christ, this man 
said: ''I hope Doctor Talmage will write a Life of Christ which a business 
man, getting home at eight o'clock at night, may profitably take up and in 
the few minutes before he starts and after he returns, read in snatches and 
understand." The remark came to Talmage's ear and he resolved to write 
the Life with that end in view. 

PRAISE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 

His resolution to write in English only calls forth a great word in 
praise of his mother-tongue. "Not a word of Latin or Greek in all the 
book," says he, "unless it be translated. We shall tell the story in Anglo- 
Saxon, the language in which John Bunyan dreamed and William Shakes- 
peare dramatized, and Longfellow romanced, and John Milton sang, and 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 



391 



George Whitfield thundered. What is the use of dragging the dead lan- 
guages into the service of such a book? Sailing on the Atlantic ocean I 
asked where did all this water come from and answered it by saying, The 
Hudson, the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Seine, the 
Tagus, the Guadalquivir.' And so I thought all the rivers of language, 
freighted with the thought of all lands and all ages, have emptied into the 
ocean of Anglo-Saxonism. Blessed to me was the hour when my mother 
taught me how to frame the first sentence out of it, and my last word on 
earth shall be a draught upon its inexhaustible treasury." That last word is 
now spoken. The words, ''Of course I know you, Maud," rise now with a 
strange pathos when we read this passage prophetic of the end. 

Talmage tells us how he thought of the title of his Life of Christ, saying: 
"I hope the title of the book will be suggestive of its contents. There 
are so many Lives of Christ that I wished to get a name not yet employed. 
On the rail-train from St. Louis to New York and while arriving at Alliance, 
Ohio, it flashed upon me — 'From Manger to Throne.' " 

As far as his own mind is concerned, the chief result of his travel in the 
Holy Land is expressed by him when he says: 

"Indeed, I have found a new Bible. I found it in the Holy Land and 
the Grecian Archipelago. A new Book of Genesis, since I saw where Abra- 
ham and Lot separated, and Joseph was buried. A new Book of Exodus, 
since I saw^ where the Israelites crossed the desert. A new Book of Revela- 
tion, since I read the Divine message to Smyrna at Smyrna, and to Ephesus 
at Ephesus. A new Book of John, since I saw Jacob's well and Sychar and 
Samaria. A new Book of Luke, since I read its twenty-third chapter on the 
blufif of Golgotha, at the place where there is room for but three crosses. 
The Bible can never be to me what it was. It is fresher, truer, lovelier, 
grander, mightier! 

AN OPEN--AIR RELIGION. 

"What I saw of the Christly and apostolic regions on this journey leads 
me to say that it was an open-air religion that Jesus founded. Indeed, the 
religion of the Old Testament and New was an out-of-door inauguration. 



392 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 



Foreseeing that the whole tendency of the human race would be toward 
a religion of tabernacles and temples and synagogues and churches; the 
two greatest things ever written, namely the Ten Commandments and the 
Sermon on the Mount, were delivered in the open air. No depreciation of 
consecrated edifices, but all places consecrated where a good word is spoken 
or a merciful deed done. What were Christ's pulpits? Deck of ship, pebbly 
beach of sea, black basalt of volcanic region, mouth of cavern, where mad 
man was undevilled, crystallized wave, strong enough to uphold the storm- 
tamer, split sarcophagus, where death had been undone, the wilderness, 
where a boy became the commissary or provider for a whole army of im- 
providents. You see the world needed a portable religion, one that the 
business man could take along the street, the farmer to the field, and the 
mechanic to the house-scaffolding, and the soldier in the long march and the 
sailor in the ratlines, a religion for the sheaf-binding and the corn-husking, 
for the plow, for the adze, for the pick-axe, for the hammer. What a 
rebuke to the man who worships in the church and cheats in the store, 
serving God one day in the week and the devil six. On Sunday night he 
leaves his religion in the pew and shuts the pew-door, saying, 'Good-bye, 
Religion, I will be back next Sunday.' A religion that you do not take 
with you wherever you go is not the open-air rehgion of which our Lord 
was the founder." 

The very essence of Talmage's teaching and that element in it which is 
most valuable appears in that setting free of the spirit of religion from its 
merely formal aspects in church buildings and visible forms. 

THE VALUE OF TUADITION. 

As he travels through the places of Palestine and Syria and the Medit- 
erranean isles, he asks if these are indeed "the genuine places of Christly, 
patriarchal and apostolic association?" answers that many of them are, and 
says: ''We have no sympathy with the bedwarfing of tradition. There are 
traditions contradicted by their absurdity, but if for several generations a 
sensible tradition goes on in regard to events connected with certain places, 
I am as certain of the localities as though pen and document had fixed them. 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND, 



393 



Indeed, sometimes tradition is more to be depended on than written com- 
munication. A writer may, for bad purposes, misrepresent, misconstrue, 
misstate, but reasonable traditions concerning places connected with great 
events are apt to be true. I have no more doubt concerning the place on 
which Christ was crucified, or in which Christ was buried, than I have about 
the fact that our Lord was slain and entombed. But suppose traditions 
contradict each other? Then try them, test them, compare them as you 
do documents. It is no more difficult to separate traditions, true and false, 
than apocryphal books from inspired books. Do not use the word tradition 
as a synonym for delusion. There is a surplus of Christian infidels traveling 
the Holy Land who are from scalp to heel surcharged with unbeliefs. A 
tradition may be as much divinely inspired as a book. The scenery of Pal- 
estine is interjoined, intertwisted and interlocked with the Scriptural occur- 
rences. The learned Ritter, who has never been charged with any weakness 
of incredulity, writes, 'No one can trace without joy and wonder the verifica- 
tion which geography pays to the history of the Holy Land.' " 

QUOTATION FROM RENAN. 

Talmage's citation of Ritter is all straight and fair, but concerning Renan 
he conveys, intentionally or not, a false impression. He says: ''When the 
brilliant Renan went to Palestine he was stuffed with enough incredulity 
to make a dozen Thomas Paines, and yet he gives the following experience: 
'The marvelous harmony of the Evangelical picture with the country which 
serves as its frame, were to me a revelation. I had before my eyes a fifth 
gospel, mutilated but still legible, and ever afterwards in the recitals of 
Matthew and Mark, instead of an abstract being that one would say had 
never existed, I saw a wonderful human figure live and move.' So said 
an unbehever." The words of Renan, with their comment here, are subtly 
twisted into giving the impression that Renan is an unwilling witness. As 
a matter of fact Renan's whole purpose in going to Palestine and the master 
idea of his life was to make men feel in reading of Christ that he was "a won- 
derful human figure living and moving." Renan believed that all the miracu- 
lous part of the Christ-story would sooner or later fall before the growing 



394 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 



conviction of men that Nature's laws are never violated by the direct inter- 
position of God, that Nature is herself God's body and Nature's law God's 
law. By revealing Jesus of Nazareth as a man, Renan hoped to make the 
wonderful and all-important philosophy of the GaHlean attractive to men 
who, like himself, did not accept the miraculous part of the Christ-story, and 
yet felt that there in Palestine lived a man whose thought would save the 
world. For this reason Renan saw not the abstract being but the living 
man. Further, the marvelous correspondence between the Evangelical 
picture and the country which served as its frame was to Renan, the scientist, 
of precisely that correspondence which exists between an animal and its 
habitat. It was Taine's idea, derived at last from physical science, that any 
spiritual work, any statue, any poem, must suit and fit and reflect the spirit 
of the land and time that gave it birth, as surely as the giraffe's long neck 
suits and was produced in a country where food was hung high in the air 
on trees which the long-necked animals reached — and therefore lived and 
transmitted their kind, while short-necked animals died. 

In other words, the ancient writers of Palestine reflect the landscape and 
spirit of their country just as modern American writers reflect the spirit of 
theirs. 

THE LANDSCAPE A COMMENTARY. 

Talmage goes on to say that in his visit to Palestine in 1889-90 he found 
the landscape a commentary. "The rivers, the mountains, the valleys, the 
lakes, the rocks, the trees, the costumes of the Holy Land," says he, "agree 
with Matthew and Mark and Luke and John. The geography and topog- 
raphy are the background of the gospel pictures. They carry a different 
part of the same song. Admit Palestine and you admit the New Testament. 
A distinguished man, years ago, came here and returned and wrote, T went 
to Palestine an infidel, and came home a Christian.' My testimony will be, 
that I came to Palestine a firm beHever in the Bible, and return a thousand- 
fold more confirmed in the divinity of the Holy Scriptures." 

A characteristic bit of Talmage, showing his quick transition from 
imaginative and poetic vision to a sudden perception of the ludicrous — how 
American he is, by the way — is this: "On a camel's back on the way to 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 



395 



Memphis, Egypt, I am writing this. How many millions have crossed the 
desert on this style of beast! Proud, mysterious, solemn, ancient, ungainly, 
majestic and ridiculous shape, stalking out of the past. The driver with 
his whip taps the camel on the fore-leg and he kneels to take you. But 
when he rises, hold fast, or you will first fall off backward as he puts his 
forefeet in standing position, and then you will fall off in front as his back 
legs take their place." 

AMERICAN- HUMOR. 

The same all-devouring American humor of Talmage (who, unlike some 
clergymen, was honest enough to be humorous when he felt like it), is com- 
pressed into his caption, ''All aboard for Jerusalem." The phrase irrever- 
ently brings the "Holy City" sharply out of its hallowed and remote romance 
and picturesqueness and symbolic poetry into contact with Chicago and the 
modern world of prose. Talmage says: 

''Glad that we came now instead of some years hence, when much of the 
religious romance will have been banished forever. A banker of Joppa, assisted 
by others, is about to begin to build a railroad from Joppa to Jerusalem. 
When this railroad is done, the steam whistle will be heard at Joppa, and 
the conductors' cry, 'All aboard for Jerusalem!' Then branch roads will be 
built and the cry will be 'Twenty minutes for dinner at Nazareth,' 'Change 
cars for Damascus,' 'All out for the Grand Trunk to Ninevah,' and camel 
and mule and dragoman will go their way, and lightning wheel will be sub- 
stituted for hoof and diligence!" Too bad that those places, at least, cannot 
be preserved from the all-leveling roller of modern commercial progress! 

We feel the express-train spirit in the way the narrative of Talmage jerks 
us into Egypt. "Now we enter Africa," writes he, under the caption, "A 
Trip Through Egypt," "and though a curse was of old pronounced upon 
those who went down into Egypt for help, it cannot be that the malediction 
was intended for those who go down into Egypt for help in writing a life of 
Christ. So I went. Some of our Lord's most important years were spent in 
Africa. What a morning was the 25th of November, 1889, for new and 
thrilling experiences, for then I first saw Egypt. I landed at Alexandria 



396 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND, 



amid a babel of voices, the boatman clamoring for our luggage, the Pasha, 
with his five wives, descending the ladder on the side of the steamer, the 
custom house officers on the alert, friends rushing aboard to greet friends, 
Europeans, Asiatics, and Africans commingHng. After a few hours' wan- 
dering about, and looking at Pompey's pillar, which has stood as the sentinel 
of twei.ty-six centuries, and through the gardens of the Khedive, and 
through streets filled with people of strange visage and costume, we sleep 
an hour to regain equilibrium before taking the train for Cairo. 

ALONG THE NTLE. 

"Now the train is rolling on through regions watered by canals and 
ditches that make the Nile the mightiest of aquatic blessings, through a 
country that otherwise would not yield food for one hungry man in all the 
land. We find here by irrigation the luxuriance of an American farm just 
after a spring shower. These Egyptian lands without a drop of water 
direct from the heavens, have been drinking until they can drink no more. 
Thank God for water, canals of it, rivers of it, lakes of it, oceans of it, all 
the cups of the earth and all the bottles of the sky at times overflowing! 
We meet processions of men and beasts on the way home from the day's 
work. Camels, dromedaries, mules and cattle discharged of their burdens. 
But alas! for the homes to which the poor inhabitants are going. For the 
most part, hovels of mud. But there is something in the scene that thor- 
oughly enHsts me. It is a novelty of wretchedness, a scene of picturesque 
rags. For thousands of years this land has been under a very damnation of 
taxes. Nothing but Christian civilization will ever roll back the influences 
which are 'spoiling the Egyptians.' There are gardens and palaces, but 
they belong to the rulers. This is the land in which Joseph and Mary and 
Christ were fugitives." 

FAHEWELL TO PALESTINE. 

We close this chapter fittingly w4th Talmage's Farewell to Palestine. 
"Farewell," cries he, "to its mountains, its lakes, its valleys. I feel myself 
worn with the emotions of this journey in the Holy Land. One cannot 
live over the most exciting scenes of eighteen hundred or four thousand 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 



397 



years, without feeling the result in every nerve in his body. Besides that, it 
is a very arduous journey. Six and seven hours of horseback in a country 
which is one great rock, split and shattered and ground into fragments, 
some of them as large as a mountain and some of them as small as the sand 
of the sea. This afternoon we are caught in a tempest that drenches the 
mountain. One of the horses falls and we halt amid blinding rain. It is 
freezing cold. Fingers and feet like ice. Two hours and three-quarters 
before encampment. We ride on in silence, longing for the terminus of 
to-day's pilgrimage. It is, through the awful inclemency of the weather, the 
only dangerous day of the journey. Slip and slide and stumble and cHmb 
and descend we must, sometimes on the horse and sometimes off, until at 
last we halt at a hovel of the village, and instead of entering camp for the 
night, we are glad to find this retreat from the storm. It is a house of one 
story, built out of mud. A feeble fire in mid-floor, but no chimney. It is 
the best house in the village. Arabs, old and young, stand round in wonder- 
ment as to why we come. There is no window in the room where I write, 
but two little openings, one over the door and the other in the wall, through 
which latter outlook I occasionally find an Arab face thrust to see how I am 
progressing. But the door is open and so I have light. This is an afternoon 
and a night never to be forgotten for its exposures and acquaintance with 
the hardships which an Arab considers a luxurious apartment. We have 
passed from Palestine to Syria, and are spending the last night out before 
reaching Damascus. To-morrow we shall have a forced march and do two 
days in one, and by having carriages sent some twenty miles out to meet 
us, we shall be able to leave stirrup and saddle, and by accelerated mode 
reach Damascus at six or seven o'clock in the evening. Let only those in 
robust health attempt to take the length of Palestine on horse-back. I do 
not think that it is because of the unhealthiness of the climate in the Holy 
Land that so many have sickened and died while here, or afterwards, but 
because of the fatigues. The number of miles gives no indication of the 
exhaustions of the way. A hundred and fifty miles in Palestine and Syria 
on horseback demand as much physical strength as four hundred miles on 
horseback in regions of easy travel. I am to-night in good health, notwith- 



398 



TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND. 



standing the terrible journey, and seated by a fire, the smoke of which, find- 
ing no appropriate place of escape, takes lodgment in my nostrils and eyes. 
For the first time in my life I realize that chimneys are a luxury but not a 
necessity. The only adornments in this room are representations of two tree 
branches in the mud of the wall, a circle supposed to mean a star, a bottle 
hung from the ceiling, and about twelve indentations in the wall, to be used 
as mantels, for anything that may be placed there. This storm is not a 
surprise, for through pessimistic prophets we have expected that at this 
season we should have rain and snow and hail throughout our journey. 

"For the most part it has been a bright and tonic atmosphere, and not 
a moment has our journey been hindered. Gratitude to God is to-night the 
prominent emotion. 'Bless the Lord, O our souls, who redeemeth our lives 
from destruction/ 



CHAPTER XXI. 



FAREWELL TO BROOKLYN. 

^)ECISION NOT TO REBUILD THE TABERNACLE AFTER THE FIRE OF 1894 DR. 

TALMAGE CALLED TO WASHINGTON CELEBRATION OF HIS SILVER JUBILEE 

IN BROOKLYN HIS CONNECTION WITH THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN 

CHURCH OF WASHINGTON RETIRES FROM MINISTRY EDITOR OF RE- 
LIGIOUS WEEKLIES. 

After twenty-five years of service in the Brooklyn pastorate, Dr. Talmage 
startled his congreg-ation, on January 21, 1894, by announcing his resigna- 
tion. Being weighted down by cares, and the pressure of a large church 
debt which it seemed was not to be lifted, he determined to take a long 
vacation. His resignation came at the end of a sermon of unusual elo- 
quence, through which had run a sorrowful vein. His text was: "And 
God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." After he had finished his 
sermon proper he said: 'This coming spring I will have been pastor of 
this church twenty-five years, and a quarter of a century is long enough 
for any minister to preach in one place. At that anniversary I will resign 
this pulpit to be occupied by such persons as you may select. Though the 
work has been arduous because of the unparalleled necessity of building 
three great churches, two of them being destroyed by fire, the field has 
been delightfully blessed of God. No other congregation has ever been 
called to build three churches, and I hope no other pastor will ever be 
called to such a fearful undertaking. My plans after resignation have not 
been developed, but I shall preach both by voice and newspaper press so 
long as my life and health are continued. 

*Trom first to last we have been a united people, and my fervent 
thanks are to all the boards of trustees and elders, whether of the present 
or past, and to all the congregation, and to Brooklyn. I have no vocabulary 

399 



400 



FAREWELL TO BROOKLYN. 



intense enough to express my gratitude to the newspaper press of these 
cities for the generous manner in which they have treated me and aug- 
mented my work for this quarter of a century. After such a long pastorate 
it is a painful thing to break the ties of affection, but I hope our friendship 
will be renewed in heaven." 

SADNESS CAUSED BY RESIGNATION. 

The announcement of his resignation came like a thunderclap out of a 
clear sky. The congregation left the edifice in melancholy silence, but re- 
solved fully to make the quarter-century celebration of their pastor's serv- 
ice a silver jubilee indeed. They proposed to make it an international 
event. A mass meeting of the leading citizens of Brooklyn took the matter 
into their own hands and wrote thus to Dr. Talmage: 

"Brooklyn, March 30, 1894. 

''Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D., 

"Pastor Brooklyn Tabernacle, Brooklyn, New York: 
"Rev. and Dear Sir: The forthcoming completion of the twenty-fifth year 
of your pastorate at the Brooklyn Tabernacle offers a convenient and wel- 
come opportunity to appropriately testify to our high appreciation of your 
distinguished services for God and humanity, and by public demonstration 
to emphasize our endorsement of the great and good work you have done 
for our city, our nation and the world. 

"We therefore respectfully request you to appoint a day when you will 
meet such of your fellow-citizens as may feel disposed to join in honoring 
one who, for a quarter of a century, has held so prominent a place among 
the public teachers of the age, and with the assurance of our profound es- 
teem, we are, very sincerely yours, 

. "Charles A. Schieren, Mayor. 

"B. F. Tracy, Ex-Secretary of the Navy, and Others." 
To this Dr. Talmage made the following reply: 

"To His Honor, Mayor Schieren, and the Reception Committee — Dear 
Friends: I feel more gratitude than I can express for your generous letter 



FAREWELL TO BROOKLYN. 



401 



inviting me to appoint a time and place where some kind expression can 
be made concerning my twenty-five years of service in Brooklyn. The in- 
vitation is the more impressive because it is signed by friends of all profes- 
sions and occupations, and in all denominations of religion. I accept your 
invitation and suggest that the meeting proposed be held the second week 
of May in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, if such time and place are convenient. 

"Again thanking you for this evidence of friendship and good neighbor- 
hood, I am, yours heartily, T. DeWITT TALMAGE." 

THE SILVER JUBILEE. 

The celebration was one that will never be forgotten. The great build- 
ing was splendidly and elaborately decorated within and without. The 
celebration began May lo. It will be always remembered by those who 
had the good fortune to participate. This is, in part, what Dr. Talmage 
said on that occasion: 

''Dear Mr. Mayor, and friends before me, and friends behind me, and 
friends all around me, and friends hovering over me, and the friends in this 
room and the adjoining rooms and the friends indoors and out of doors — 
forever photographed upon my mind and heart is this scene of May lo, 1894. 
The lights, the flags, the decorations, the flowers, the music, the illumined 
faces will remain with me while earthly life lasts, and be a cause of thanks- 
giving after I have passed into the great beyond. To-night I think that the 
heavens above us are full of pure white blessings. My twenty-five years 
in Brooklyn have been happy years. Hard work, of course. This is the 
fourth church in which I have preached since coming to Brooklyn. This 
church had its mother and its grandmother and its great-grandmother. I 
could not tell the story of disasters without telling the story of heroes and 
heroines, and around me in all these years have stood men and women 
of whom the world was not worthy. But for the most part these twenty- 
five years have been to me great happiness." 

Participating in the celebration by speech, letters and presence, famous 
men and distinguished women from all parts of the world eagerly offered 
tribute to the preacher who had spread the Gospel into every land. General 



402 



FAREWELL TO BROOKLYN, 



B. F. Tracy, the presiding officer of the evening, made a speech in which 
he paid eloquoit tribute to the power and influence of Dr. Talmage: 

THE TRIBUTE OF TRACY. 

*'Last evening," said General Tracy, "Brooklyn honored itself by a cele- 
bration, local in scope, but this evening the celebration takes on a wider 
character. It becomes national, even international. And it is fitting that 
it should be so. While Dr. Talmage for the last twenty-five years has been 
heard in Brooklyn, his sermons delivered here have been read the world 
over. No preacher of to-day, or of any day, or any time, has been so gen- 
erally heard and so widely read as Dr. Talmage. His sermons are published 
every week in more than three thousand newspapers, each of which reaches 
thousands upon thousands of readers. There is scarcely a village in the 
United States from Maine to Texas or from New York to San Francisco in 
which the sermons delivered in this Tabernacle are not regularly published in 
full every week. The same is true of Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand 
and India, and they have been translated into more than half a dozen different 
European languages. It is believed that these sermons of Dr. Talmage 
enter week by week more than five millions of homes, and are placed within 
the reach of more than twenty millions of people. No minister of the Gospel 
in the world's history every commanded in his lifetime so great an audi- 
ence, and no stronger proof could be given that this man teaches what 
the world needs to hear, that he truly ministers to the souls of men. This 
is the secret of the influence which our friend has exerted, that in bearing 
the message he speaks a language which finds a response in every human 
heart.'' 

FAREWELH 

William M. Evarts spoke also in eulogy of the great preacher, and Patrick 
Walsh, United States Senator from Georgia, delivered a brilliant tribute to 
the worth of the words and deeds of Dr. Talmage. Letters, telegrams and 
cablegrams were read from hundreds of persons. All were filled with ad- 
miration for the pastor of the church and of commendation for the jubilee 



FAREWELL TO BROOKLYN. 



403 



program. Among those who participated thus in spirit were the Arch- 
deacon of London, Canon Wilberforce, Bishop of London, ex-President 
Harrison, governors of many states, prominent ministers throughout the 
country, several members of the Supreme court and others famous in all 
the walks of life. 

The silver jubilee~was concluded by a service at noon on Sunday, May 
13. The immense Tabernacle was packed to the very doors. Six or seven 
thousand people were inside the four walls, and hundreds of others were 
unable to gain admittance. Dr. Talmage preached with more than usual 
eloquence, and at the conclusion of the sermon invited all persons in the 
vast audience to come forward for a final handshake. While the organist 
played the Talmage Jubilee March, thousands of men and women shook 
hands with the old man eloquent, whose voice they had there heard for 
the last time. Slowly they passed out of the great building, and at last 
Talmage himself, the last of a score of lingering friends, left behind forever 
that fair great-granddaughter of the church to which he had come a quarter 
of a century before, and which his talents had made the most famous church 
of all the Protestants 

CALLED TO WASHINGTON- 

In the following year Dr. Talmage accepted a call as co-pastor of the 
First Presbyterian church of Washington, and went to that city to assist Dr. 
Sunderland. He afterward succeeded Dr. Sunderland as pastor of the con- 
gregation, and continued to preach there until 1899, when he resigned the 
pastorate to devote himself to literary work and lecturing. 

'Tn church matters," says Mr. C. L. Du Bois, the chief of surveys of the 
General Land Office, "I have probably been more intimately associated with 
Dr. Talmage than any one else in Washington during his residence, and 
more particularly while he was pastor of the First Presbyterian church, of 
which I was treasurer, elder and trustee at the time of his coming among 
us. I was in a position to know the history of his call to our church and to 
Washington. The true version of it I have never yet seen pubHshed. 

''Our beloved Dr. Sunderland called the officers of the church together 
one day on his return from the North and told us that Dr, Talmage's son 



404 



FAREWELL TO BROOKLYN. 



Frank had been talking to him about our church and the possibility of locat- 
ing his father here as assistant or associate pastor. Dr. Sunderland said he 
told Frank that we would be deUghted to have him, and that he himself 
would be pleased with the association. Dr. Sunderland saw in it the hand 
of Providence in that it would bring throngs and money to the old church 
whose interests and perpetuity he had so much at heart. He advised us 
to draw up a letter and call to Dr. Talmage, which was done, and I con- 
ducted the correspondence with him myself. 

TALMAGE'S LIBEIIALITY. 

''Our arrangements with him showed extreme liberality on his part. He 
made no charge for his services. Whatever surplus was found after payment 
of salaries of the other two pastors and all expenses, he would take, but no 
more. Many wild rumors of a princely salary paid him were afloat. But 
the greatest amount paid him in any one year was $3,500, and he never made 
application to the trustees or to the treasurer for any funds, nor did he make 
any complaint if the surplus was not what he hoped or expected. 

"He was always sensitive to public criticism, which seemed strange for 
one who for several decades had stood in the 'fierce light' of it, and so at his 
request we endeavored not to admit the public to our financial records while 
he was connected with the church. 

"As to his pastoral duties and his work as a pastor, it should be borne 
in mind by those who are given to detract from his great service to mankind, 
and by small minds which are always envious of men of genius, that a posi- 
tive, unmistakable agreement was made by him with the spiritual and tem- 
poral authorities of our church in a conference at the Arlington that he 
should not be called upon to make pastoral calls or to conduct funerals. 
And it is due to the memory of this great man that this was not done because 
he wished to escape it, but was ofifered by him as a plan to divide the church 
work, so that his pulpit associates should not be deprived of active labor 
and participation. 

"My intercourse with Dr. Talmage was thus an intimate and cordial one, 
and I had an opportunity to observe at close range his character and his dis- 



FAREWELL TO BROOKLYN, 



406 



position. I found him a most genial, appreciative, high-minded, Hberal 
man. This is a natural corollary of thirty years of sermon writing and 
preaching. In his tribute to the printing press he said one day: 'It has 
enabled me to preach a sermon to the public once a week for thirty years 
without a single exception.' When this is comprehended, can any one esti- 
mate or appreciate the vastness of the good he has wrought upon the count- 
less millions who have read and heard his marvelous teachings? 

''Of course, it would be presumptuous in me to attempt a eulogy. Such 
a man needs none. It is found in the thousands and thousands of lives 
he has made better and brighter all over the world. 

LEFT FINANCIAL MATTERS TO OTHERS. 

"Personally, I had a great affection for him. I could not help it. His 
nature was sunny and his disposition optimistic. I have many letters and 
notes which breathe this temperament. It seems as though he attended to 
all church matters himself, but had some member of his family look after 
the financial and business part of his affairs. I asked once if he received 
that little Christmas present I sent him ($500 on his salary), and he said, 'I 
believe my daughter did speak of having received it,' showing that he left 
these matters to her at that time. He was prompt and methodical in 
all his engagements and preferred to have all arrangements made in advance. 
He always selected his hymns during the week and sent them to me by 
special messenger, to be transmitted to the chorister and printed in the leaflet 
or bulletin. One kind act of his I shall forever remember most gratefully. 
It is the Presbyterian custom to baptize persons on communion Sabbath, 
but as it happened on a rainy day my wife was afraid to take our baby down 
for the ceremony, and wished me to ask Dr. Talmage to perform the rite 
the next Sabbath if it should be a pleasant day. I hesitated, knowing he 
did not like interruptions to the regular procedure, but upon a hint of my 
wishes, conveyed to him in writing, he sent a special messenger to me with 
a cordial and graceful note heartily consenting, and asking me to bring the 
baby forward after the second hymn, and he would be glad to christen him. 
It was an impressive baptism, and I am keeping that letter for the boy to 



406 



FAREWELL TO BROOKLYN. 



read in the coming years, because I am sure he will treasure it as a valuable 
souvenir of a famous man. 

NOT A SELF-ADVERTISEB. 

"Attention has often been directed to the growth of the church during 
the Talmage pastorate, and inquiries have been made of me as to whether 
his preaching resulted in accessions. I have ahvays answered in this way: 
that a number of our people were not comfortable or satisfied with the 
crowds of strangers who squeezed themselves into their pews, and they took 
letters to other churches in the city, but on the other hand their places 
were filled by new members, mostly by letter, and it is a fact drawn from 
the records of the church that during the period of his ministry the actual 
membership of the church was at high-water mark. • 

''Dr. Talmage always conducted the midweek prayer meeting when 
he was not absent lecturing, and the services were profoundly interesting 
and instructive. This fact is not generally known. To sum up, as a result 
of four years' close observation of this remarkable divine, I can truthfully 
assert that he was a man of deep and fervent piety. To my mind there 
is nothing in the report so often credited that he was fond of advertising 
himself or of preaching sensational sermons. He was, it is true, full of 
quaint sayings, original presentations of the truth, and unique oratory, but 
who will deny his splendid courage on all occasions when he came out on 
the right side of every momentous question. Vigor, boldness, and sincerity 
were his characteristics. There never was but one Talmage; there never 
can be, it is believed by many, such a preacher. He stands forth a solitary 
figure among the world-famous men of this century, a man who preached 
the gospel to a larger number of hearers than any one in modern or an- 
cient times." 

On the evening of October 22, 1895, Dr. Talmage was installed in 
his new pastoral office in Washington. On March 14, 1897, he was pro- 
posed as chaplain for the United States Senate. On July 4 of the same 
year there were rumors of trouble between the doctor and his new charge, 
and a report was circulated that he contemplated resigning his pastorate. 
On July 22 he denied having any intention of leaving Washington and 



FAREWELL TO BROOKLYN. 



407 



on the following day denounced in the most emphatic terms the person 
who started the report. On January 24, 1898, Dr. Talmage's associate, Dr. 
Sunderland, resigned. On March 9, 1899, Dr. Talmage resigned from the 
Washington church to do literary work, saying: ''I made up my mind to 
resign because I find that I am unable to give to the place the time and atten- 
tion which it deserves." 

Despite the great crowds that were always present at the services, the 
church was in a bad way financially. The report of the treasurer for the 
calendar year of 1898-99 showed a deficiency of $750. As Dr. Talmage was 
to receive as salary all money left after the expenses of the church had been 
defrayed and the salary of the pastor emeritus had been paid, he of course 
received nothing for his services the last year he was there. 

This fact, however, in the Hght of Mr. Du Bois' story of the five hundred 
dollars, could not greatly have embarrassed the great divine. 

From the time of his resignation until the very week of his death his 
sermons appeared weekly, ''making of the Cylinder of the printing press a 
wheel of the Lord's chariot." 



CHAPTER XXII. 



TALMAGE ON THE THEATER. 

A LOVER OF HISTRIONIC ART, A FOE TO THEATRICAL VICES — A SERMON HE 

NEVER PREACHED, ""l AM TOO BUSY^' TO HUNT DOWN LIES THE THEATER 

A GOOD PLACE IN WHICH TO PREACH THE GOSPEL. 

Dr. Talmage charged upon the evils of the theater as he charged upon 
the evils of the department store, or the evils of the printing shop, or of the 
church, or of the home. He did not stop to question whether the people 
who were interested in the particular thing or business or art that he wished 
to criticise were his friends or his enemies. He saw only the weeds and 
went into the field to uproot them. When the grain was free from the 
danger of being smothered by the noxious and poisonous growth of these 
"emissaries of the devil," as he was pleased to call all those things that had 
an influence for evil either in the animal, vegetable or human families, then 
he would take time to call attention to the virtues of the good grain. But 
first clear away the weeds. 

That was the way he treated the theater. But this time he was not 
alone. One Sunday when he had announced that he would preach a ser- 
mon to the theatrical profession a newspaper that had overlooked the assign- 
ment and had nobody on hand to take his sermon, did the best it could under 
the circumstances. It turned the matter over to a reporter who was familiar 
with Dr. Talmage's style and prejudices, and he wrote a report of the dis- 
course. However severe may have been the Brooklyn divine's strictures 
on the Stage, and its efifects on the morals of a community, they were noth- 
ing to the diatribes this reporter poured out under the guise of the good 
doctor's name. He no doubt knew more of the seamy side of theatric life 
than Dr. Talmage and had not the restrictive influence of a burning desire to 

do good that always animated Talmage to curb his expression. So the 

408 



T ALU AGE ON THE THEATER. 



409 



sermon that came out the next morning was what is commonly known to 
newspaper men as "a scorcher." Talmage's name was in everybody's mouth 
and theater people everywhere cursed him roundly for his abuse of them 
and the institution in which they earned their livings and whatever of laurels 
came their way. 

SEBMON TO THEATRICAL PEOPLE. 

A few weeks later, Dr. Talmage preached another sermon on this topic 
in which he gave a clear statement of his estimate of the theater for good 
as well as for evil. He denied preaching the other sermon and told how it 
was written. As this gives the views on a most important branch of art of 
the man whose character we are endeavoring to set forth in an honest light, 
we reprint the sermon in full as it was delivered. His sermon was as follows : 

''And certain of the chiefs of Asia, which were his friends, sent unto him, 
desiring him that he would not adventure himself into the theatre." — Acts 
xix: 31. 

The histrionic art has claimed much of the attention of the world since 
the day when Thespis acted his play in a wagon at the festival of Dionysius, 
until this hour, when the finest audience-rooms in St. Petersburg, and 
Venice, and Milan, and Paris, and London, are given up to the drama. 
Professor Stacke, by his exhumation of the theatre of Bacchus, at Athens, 
has thrown much light upon the architecture of the ancient theatre. It 
was a vast building — the seats rising in concentric circles until no human 
voice could reach the multitude and the play-actors had masks which served 
as speaking-trumpets, while there were under the seats reflections of sound. 
The building was roofless, but covered with an awning to keep out the glare 
of the sun, as all the performances were in the day-time, while at the side 
there were porticoes into which many of the people retired in time of rain. 
These buildings were an overmastering splendor of marble, and glass, and 
statuary, and gold, and silver, and precious stones. For twelve consecutive 
hours, yea, from morning until night, the audiences would assemble in multi- 
tudes of eighty or a hundred thousand people — ay, all the population of the 



410 



TALMAGE ON THE THEATER. 



city. My text gives a glimpse of one of those buildings. It was six hundred 
and sixty feet in diameter, and in full accord with the architectural pomp 
and magnificence of that wonderful city. Paul wanted to attend that 
theater. His friends were determined he should not go there. He says, 
*1 must go there," and when so determined a man as Paul proposes a thing, 
it is a very dif!icult matter to hinder him. But they held fast of him, and 
the chief men of the city ''sent unto him, desiring that he would not adven- 
ture himself into the theater." What! had the apostle become so fond of the 
spectacular — had he been so pleased with the writings of Eschylus, the 
dramatist, and with the reputation of Sophocles and Euripides, the world- 
renowned tragedians, that between his sermons he must go and look upon 
the performances of the theater? No! He wanted to go into that theater 
to preach Christ to the people, and vindicate the cause of truth and righteous- 
ness. Indeed, I do not know any place more appropriate for the preaching 
of the Gospel than these palaces of dramatic art. Christ says, ''Go into all the 
world and preach my Gospel." That means preach it everywhere. No 
jplace too good for it. No place too bad for it. I never had a better 
time in proclaiming Christ to the people than one night in Chestnut Street 
Theater, Philadelphia, at the invitation of the owner of the theater, and 
under the auspices of the Young Men's Christian Association of that city. 

PREACHING IN THEATERS. 

We began the service by a prayer-meeting in the green-room, and we con- 
cluded the service by an inquiry-meeting, in which scores of souls started 
out for heaven, afterward joining the different churches of the city. Chat- 
ham Theater, in New York, was nevei^ put to a grander purpose than when, 
in 1857, during the great revival, the doors were thrown open for religious 
assemblages, and hundreds of souls found that their birth-place, and on one 
occasion, the service of the main audience was overpowered by the Christian 
songs that came rolling up from the bar-room where men once destroyed 
their bodies and souls with strong drink. Until the ministry shall be in- 
vited to preach in all these palaces of dramatic art, the best thing we can do 
is, as far as possible, to imitate Paul the Apostle, and adventure ourselves 



TALMAGE ON THE THEATER. 



411 



into the theater by preaching to those who attend upon it, and to those 
who act upon its stage, and to all the employes of the institution. 

''But," says some one, "you are the last m.an in the world to preach to the 
theatrical profession, since you are their avowed enemy." Before I get 
through this morning, I will show you whether or not I am their enemy. 
Three or four years ago, I preached three or four sermons on the character 
and condition of the average American theater. What 'I thought, and felt 
then, I think and feel now, but my utterances were very much misrepre- 
sented. I never made any wholesale and indiscriminate assault upon the 
theatrical profession. I acknowledged then, as I acknowledge now, that 
there is as much genius in that profession as in any other profession, that 
there are men and women in that profession who are pure and honest, that 
the characteristic of many of them has been generosity, and I said other 
things in that direction, but the reports in the newspapers did not give 
that part of my sermons, while they gave those parts that were entirely 
critical of that profession — that omission, not from any desire to misrepre- 
sent me^ but I suppose from the crow^ded state of the columns of the news- 
papers at that time. One sermon was ascribed to me, not one word of which 
did I preach. I have this fact authenticated, that in one of the newspaper 
offices of the country, on Sunday afternoon, the question was asked, "Where 
is Talmage's sermon on the theater?" The answer was, "The gentleman 
who went over to phonograph the sermon met with an accident, and he did 
not get to the Tabernacle, and so we haven't received it." "Well," said one 
in the office, "you go down and find out what the text was." A messenger 
went and found out what the text was, and came back, and in that office my 
sermon was written out! and by a man who had never seen me — making 
me the foe of all kinds of amusements, representing me as the denouncer of 
all the men and women of the theatrical profession, without any exception, 
as profligate and abandoned. "Well," you say, "w4iy didn't you correct 
the impression?" Oh, I never hunt lies! I have so many things to do, and 
that is not my business. My work is to proclaim the whole counsel of 
God as far as I understand it, and I leave the result with the Lord, and I 
find the plan works well. 



412 



T ALU AGE ON THE THEATER, 



CHURCH AND PLAYHOUSE. 

*We must, however, at this point of the discourse, acknowledge that 
there is an everlasting war between the church and the playhouse. You do 
not like the church. We do not like the theater. But there is a common 
ground on which we may meet to-day, as immortal men and women, with 
souls to be saved and lost, for whom there is a Christ ready to Hft every 
burden, and heal every wound, and save every soul. Him I declare unto you 
to-day. 

I ask that the members of the theatrical profession, whether present to- 
day, or after awhile reading these words, come immediately, and uncon- 
ditionally surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. I 
make the request on two grounds. First, because of- the vast amount of 
usefulness you might wield for Christ. It seems to me that the entire course 
of the world's history would have been changed if men and women who have 
given themselves to the world's theatrical entertainment had given them- 
selves to Christian work. It was the dramatic element sanctified in Robert 
Hall, and Thomas Chalmers, and George Whitefield, that made them be- 
come the irresistible and all-conquering instruments of righteousness. If 
Hackett, and Edmund Kean, and John Kemble, and George Frederick 
Cook, and Junius Booth, and Garrick, and their contemporaries of the stage, 
had given themselves to the service of the Lord, this would have been a far 
different world from what it is. If the Davenports, and the Irvings, and the 
Wallacks, and the Edwin Booths of to-day would some night at the close 
of their performance come to the front of the stage and say to the people, 
"Ladies and gentlemen, from this time I begin the especial service of Jesus 
Christ, I give myself in public and private to His cause, I am to be His for 
time and for eternity" — it would revolutionize the American cities — it would 
save the world! 

THE ACTOR'S NEED OF CHRIST. 

"Oh," you say, "now you are talking about an impossibility; you know 
very well that there is such a prejudice against our profession that if we 
should come and knock at the door of a Christian church we would be 



TALMAGE ON THE THEATER. 



413 



scouted and driven back." Great mistake. When Spencer H. Cone stepped 
from the burning theater in Richmond, December 26, 181 1, and stepped 
into the pulpit of the Baptist denomination, he was rapturously welcomed, 
and I ask w^hat impression that man ever made as a play-actor compared with 
the influence with which he thrilled Christendom when the great tragedian 
had become the great apostle? I ask, then, in the name of God, that the 
dramatic talent of the world change its profession. I ask that you give to 
God your heart, your head, your hand, your foot, your power of impersona- 
tion, your grip over the human heart, your capacity to subdue and transport 
and electrify great assemblages. xA^dmitting, as you will, that it is every one's 
duty to put to the grandest possible use every faculty that God gives man, I 
ask you to come and throw yourselves into the stupendous work of prepar- 
ing men and women from an unending eternity. Garrick, the actor, and 
Whitefield, the preacher, were contemporaries, were friends and admirers. 
Garrick said he would give a thousand guineas for the capacity to use the 
exclamation "Oh!" as George Whitefield used it. The triumph of the one 
was in Drury Lane Theater, the triumph of the other was on Moorfields 
Conimon, where thousands of souls under his ministry cried out for God. 
From the door of eternity, which man has the pleasanter retrospect? Oh, 
I will ask you to decide this matter as you will wish you had decided it after 
the curtain has fallen upon the last act of the tragedy of the world's existence. 

I put this request for your surrender to the Lord, also on the ground of 
your own happiness and safety. There is no peace for any occupation or 
profession without Christ. Your profession is no exception. The huzza in 
the Haymarket Theater and in Covent Garden, and in Goodman's Fields, 
and in the Royal Theater of London, could not give peace to Mrs. Siddons, 
and Thomas Betterton, and Edmund Kean, and Macready. The world may 
laugh at the farce, but the comedian finds it a very serious business. Liston 
in his day had more power to move the mirth of an audience than any other 
man. He went one day to Dr. Abernathy, saying, "Oh, doctor, I am so 
low-spirited, can't you cure me?" Dr. Abernathy did not know it was Lis- 
ton, the comedian, who had come as a patient, and he said to him, "Pooh, 
pooh, I am not the man you want to see; don't come and see a doctor; go 



414 



T ALU AGE ON THE THEATER, 



and see Listen; two doses would cure a madman." Alas! for Liston, he 
might cure others, but he could not cure himself. I tell you that without 
God there is no happiness and no permanent good cheer. At the wave of 
the orchestral baton, when the music rises, and the chandeliers gleam, and 
the play goes on plunging toward the catastrophe, it does not seem as if 
you had any disquietude at all, but there are times of heartache, and exas- 
peration, and disappointment for you. A great London actor went into 
the madhouse for life, because by some unfortunate stroke of a sword he 
lost his wig in the play of Hamlet, and the guffaw of the audience utterly 
frenzied him. 

HAPPINESS DEPENDS ON CHRISTIANITY. 

Besides all the other annoyance of your life, there is the question of 
livelihood, and you know that in your profession it is a very precarious thing. 
Sometimes you are flush with money. Then a favorite troupe comes along 
and pushes you off the stage. "Hush! hush!" said the French actress to 
the manager, as he conducted her from the theater to her carriage. "Hush! 
don't you let my coachman hear that you have given me only eighteen 
hundred francs a year, when I give him twenty-four hundred!" Sometimes 
you have gone from the theater, when in the play you were robed, and gar- 
landed, and coronated like a queen, to a home where the struggle for bread 
is awful. Now I ask you to come out and try the comforts of the old-fash- 
ioned religion of Jesus Christ. "Oh," you say, "in order to do that I should 
have to give up my profession." My brother, my sister, decide one ques- 
tion at a time. First give your heart to the Lord, and then decide this 
question. You will be able to decide it better then. You will have God 
to help you to decide it. When I was, three or four years ago, preaching 
on the condition of the average American theater, there were several play- 
actresses who came to my house and said, "We would like to become Chris- 
tians, if you could only find for us some other occupation." I said to them 
what I say to you, that no one ever becomes a Christian until he or she is 
willing to come in this spirit and say, "Oh, Lord Jesus, I take Thee now 
anyhow, come weal or woe, prosperity or privation, comfortable home or 
almshouse.'* It was in that spirit that the poor girl wrote the memorable 



TALMAGE ON THE THEATER. 



415 



hymn which you all know, after she had been turned out of her father's 
house, because he was an infidel, and she was determined to be a Christian, 
when she sat down and wrote in her banishment, these words: 

''Jesus, I my cross have taken. 
All to leave and follow Thee, 
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken. 
Thou from hence my all shall be. 

'Terish every fond ambition. 

All I've hoped, or wished, or known 
Yet how rich is my condition, 

God and heaven are still my own." 

But let me say that God lets no one be shelterless and hungry who 
comes in that spirit. She shall have the omnipotent God for her friend, and 
all the armed hosts of heaven will be her sworn allies. The poor girl will 
be richer than all the rich men of the earth who have made this world their 
God, in their dying mornent, saying a few nice religious things so as to help 
the minister through with his funeral sermon! Your safety and your hap- 
piness, as well as your usefulness, depend upon your being a Christian. Be- 
sides that, after the four acts have been gone through with — infancy, youth, 
manhood, old age — and you come to the fifth act, the last act, the catas- 
trophe, the death-hour — what then? I know not what may be the shifting 
scenes of the act, whether palace or garret, or whether the foot-fights may 
be gfittering festivities, or the dim candles of destitution, but this I know: 
it will be a momentous hour. Enter, the King of Terrors, with all his cour- 
tiers of pain, and sickness and bereavement. Exeunt, all the pleasures, 
and advantages, and enjoyments of this fife. I don't know whether you 
wifi leave this world amid the excitement of the stage, as did Mr. Palmer, 
the London actor, who, whfie he was quoting the words of the play, "Oh, 
God, is there not another and a better world?" dropped fifeless in the pres- 
ence of the aghast audience, and then was carried to the green-room. I 
don't know what wifi be the circumstances of your leaving this world, but I 
know the hour wifi be a sifting process. In that hour afi your past life wifi 
come before you — afi you have been and all you might have been. I hope 



416 



TALMAGE ON THE THEATER. 



it will not be with you in that hour as it was with Madame Rachel, the 
celebrated actress, who ordered the jewels which had been given her by 
the kings of Europe to be brought to her, and with her dying hands she 
turned over the glittering jewels and said. "Ah, my bright jewels, must I 
leave you so soon?" In the final hour it will be a grand thing if we can 
look back upon a life of usefulness, but it will be a dreadful thing if we look 
back upon an ill-spent life. Charles Lamb once wrote a play for the stage. 
It w^as a very poor play, but the loudest hissing came from the gallery where 
Charles Lamb sat, and the audience looked up and saw that it was the 
author of the play who was hissing his own production. And, my friends, 
if at last we can look back upon a Hfe wasted, or full of fatal mistakes, 
we ourselves will be the severest critics — we will be the most vehement in 
the denunciation of our own neglect and stupidity. While in the great 
Brooklyn theater disaster we were all warned to prepare for eternity, it seems 
to me that it was an especial call to the theatrical profession in the death 
of Claude Burroughs and Henry Murdoch, the two brilHant dramatists. 

WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT. 

Ah! they had but little time to prepare for eternity that night, when the 
play of "The Two Orphans" was exchanged for a scene which made many 
orphans. What difference does it make to them now whether the audience 
that sat before them that night were pleased or displeased with their acting? 
What difference does it make now to Macready whether the Astor Place 
Opera House greeted him with a volley of stones, or whether he was car- 
ried off on the shoulders of the exultant people. What difference does it 
make to Edwin Forrest whether the critics liked or disliked his "Richard 
HI.," or his "Gladiator," or his "King Lear," or his "Metamora," or his 
"Shylock?" When we have gone out of this world, if our life has been a 
failure, no clapping encore will ever bring us back to re-enact it. Our char- 
acter in the last moment will be our character through eternity. "As the 
tree falleth, so it must lie." He that is holy will be holy still. He that is 
unjust will be unjust still. He that is filthy will be filthy still. 

Oh, men of the theatrical profession, to whom those words may come, 



T ALU AGE ON THE THEATER, 



417 



and men of all occupations and professions — prepare for eternity. After 
the first ordeal of death has passed, there will be a second ordeal, and that 
will be the judgment. On that day the audience will be a vaster audience 
than all the people who were ever gathered in Covent Garden, and the Hay- 
market, and Goodman's Fields, and Drury Lane. It will be an innumerable 
audience. The footlights will be burning mountains and burning seas. The 
orchestra will be the thunders of a parting heaven. The tragedy will be 
the rising of the righteous and the overthrow of the wicked. The closing 
scene will be the dispersing of the audience to their everlasting homes of glad- 
ness or retribution. Then the Hghts will go out, and the spectacle will 
be ended forever! 



CHAPTER XXIII 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 

TALMAGE's idea that INGERSOLL HELPS RATHER THAN HARMS RELIGION 

TALMAGE NOT AT HIS BEST IN DENOUNCING INTELLECTUAL EVIL HIS 

POWER AGAINST MORAL EVIL HIS APPEAL TO THE HEART IN THE GREAT 

PASSAGE, ''burn THE BIBLES'' CERTAIN SOPHISTRIES EMPLOYED BY 

TALMAGE. 

One day some friends were talking about Ingersoll. "He is doing a 
great deal of harm to the church/' said the spokesman. The others, all 
excepting Talmage, assented. "He is keeping many young men from join- 
ing the church." Again there were expressions of assent from every one 
but Talmage. "If he goes on like this he will empty the churches, and 
then what will the ministers do?" This was more than Talmage could stand. 

"Empty the churches," he exclaimed. "Why, he'll fill them. If any 
thinking man wants to get into a frame of mind that will drive him back to 
the comfort and the shelter of religion, of the church, all he needs to do is 
to take a course of what they are beginning to call Ingersollism. Ingersoll 
is supposed to be the devil's chief recruiting agent on earth, but he is noth- 
ing of the kind. People only go to hear him in order to be entertained and 
amused. Ingersoll is only a wit. He is merely a cheap scoffer. He doesn't 
do any harm to religion. I repeat, he is populating the churches instead of 
depopulating them. It's easy enough to laugh. A man can laugh at his 
grandmother. Ingersoll attacking the Bible is like a green grasshopper 
chirping and sawing away on a railroad track, denouncing the steam engine, 
when the express comes thundering along. The grasshopper can't stay the 
express, and Ingersoll can't stop the truth. He can't even derail it." 

The metaphor has all the Talmagean force — it is not unlike the brilliant, 

stinging methods of Ingersoll himself — it is fighting the devil with fire. 

418 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



419 



Moreover, there is behind the words of Talmage that absolute conviction 
which breeds conviction in others. Even an admirer of Ingersoll is reminded 
that his apostle constructed nothing, offered no substitute for that which 
he tore down, and sees that purely negative work has nothing in it which 
can endure. Nevertheless Talmage is better, more passionately in earnest, 
more convincing when he denounces a moral and physical evil like rum, of 
which he has seen with his eyes and with his heart the terrible consequences, 
than he is when he denounces what he regards as an intellectual evil, for 
instance, the teaching of Ingersoll. Furthermore, he has a better cause. 
To extinguish heresy, the task Talmage assumes in his six answers to Inger- 
soll, is the same fundamental task that in a darker age than ours, lit the 
fires and invented the nerve-racking implements of the Spanish Inquisition. 
Attacking the belief of another man, no matter how wrong that man's belief 
may be, is not a part of Christ's spirit, in spite of the fact that the churches 
of all times and creeds have done it. It is the weakest side of Christianity. 

The strongest side of Christianity or of any other religion is its attack 
upon great moral evils, such as alcoholism. In this attack Talmage's whole 
nature, with all its splendid blaze of passion, rushes into words that strike 
on men's hearts like blows. 

Although he is not at his best in his answers to Ingersoll, he makes 
many a telling point — the conflict between the two keen minds armed with 
unusual powers of argument, illustration, satire, ridicule, is gladiatorial. 
There is plenty of emotional force generated in Talmage by the necessity 
of meeting his opponent's arguments. Our point is merely that this emo- 
tion is based upon antagonism to an individual person and upon antagonism 
to an intellectual belief, and that this emotion is by nature less noble, less 
profound and less truthful than the emotion with which the preacher attacks 
a moral evil. 

"BURN THE BIBLES!" 

The strongest part of Talmage's answer is not the intellectual part — in 
fact that part contains glaring flaws of logic and manifest sophistries. The 
strongest appeal Talmage makes for the Bible in its defense against the 
attack of Ingersoll is not his appeal to the mind, but his appeal to the heart. 



■420 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



Take, for instance, that magnificent passage in which he mockingly calls 
on the world to burn its Bibles, new and old: "It seems from what we have 
recently heard that the Christian religion is a huge blunder, that the Mosaic 
account of the Creation is an absurdity large enough to throw all nations 
into rollicking guffaw, that Adam and Eve never existed, that the ancient 
flood and Noah's ark were impossibilities, that there never was a miracle, 
that the Bible is the friend of cruelty, of murder, of polygamy, of obscenity, 
of adultery, of all forms of base crime, that the Christian religion is woman's 
tyrant and man's stultification, that the Bible from lid to lid is a fable, an 
obscenity, a cruelty, a humbug, a sham, a lie, that the martyrs who died for 
its truth were miserable dupes, that the Church of Jesus Christ is properly 
gazetted as a fool, that when Thomas Carlyle, the sceptic, said, The Bible is 
a noble book,' he was dropping into imbecility, that when Theodore Parker, 
the infidel, declared in Music Hall, Boston, 'Never a boy or girl in all Chris- 
tendom but was profited by that great book,' he was becoming very weak- 
minded, that it is something to bring a blush to the cheek of every patriot, 
that John Adams, the father of American Independence, declared, The 
Bible is the best book in all the world,' and that lion-hearted Andrew Jack- 
son turned into a sniveling coward when he said, That book, sir, is the 
rock on which our Republic rests,' and that Daniel Webster abdicated the 
throne of his intellectual power and resigned his logic, and from being the 
great expounder of the Constitution and the great lawyer of his age, turned 
into an idiot when he said, 'My heart assures and reassures me that the Gospel 
of Jesus Christ must be a divine reality. From the time that at my mother's 
feet, or on my father's knee, I first learned to lisp verses from the sacred 
writings, they have been my daily study and vigilant contemplation, and if 
there is anything in my style or thought to be commended, the credit is due 
to my kind parents in instilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures,' 
and that William H. Seward, the diplomatist of the century, only showed 
his puerility when he declared. The whole hope of human progress is sus- 
pended on the ever-growing influences of the Bible,' and that it is wisest for 
us to take that book from the throne in the affections of uncounted multi- 
tudes, and put it under our feet to be trampled upon by hatred and hissing 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



421 



contempt, and that your old father was hoodwinked, and cajoled, and 
cheated, and befooled, when he leaned on this as a staff after his hair grew 
gray, and his hands were tremulous, and his steps shortened as he came up 
to the verge of the grave, and that your mother sat with a pack of lies on 
her lap while reading of the better country, and of the ending of all her 
aches and pains, and reunion not only of those of you who stood around 
her, but with the children she had buried with infinite heartache, so that 
she could read no more until she took off her spectacles, and wiped from 
them the heavy mist of many tears. Alas! that for forty and fifty years they 
should have walked under this delusion and had it under their pillow when 
they lay a-dying in the back room, and asked that some words from the vile 
page might be cut upon the tombstone under the shadow of the old country 
meeting-house where they sleep this morning waiting for a resurrection that 
will never come. This book, having deceived them, and having deceived the 
mighty intellects of the past, must not be allowed to deceive our larger, 
mightier, vaster, more stupendous intellects. And so out with the book 
from the court-room, where it is used in the solemnization of testimony. 
Out with it from under the foundation of church and asylum. Out 
with it from the domestic circle. Gather together all the Bibles — the 
children's Bibles, the family Bibles, those newly bound, and those with lid 
nearly worn out and pages almost obliterated by the fingers long ago turned 
to dust — bring them all together, and let us make a bonfire of them, and by 
it warm our cold criticism, and after that turn under with the plowshare of 
public indignation the polluted ashes of that loathsome, adulterous, obscene, 
cruel and deathful book which is so antagonistic to man's liberty and 
woman's honor, and the world's happiness." 

That magnificent appeal for the Bible, is, we repeat, an appeal to the 
heart. All the tenderest and best emotions and associations of life which 
have twined themselves about that Book are most wonderfully evoked. 
Not the abstract Bible, but all the Bibles, one by one, "those with lid nearly 
worn out and pages almost obliterated by the fingers long ago turned to 
dust," are what Talmage, here at his very best, here a poet truly touching 
the heart, brings before the imagination of his hearer. 



422 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL, 



Furthermore Talmage enlists here on his side not only those to whom 
the Bible is word for word inspired by God as other books are not. He 
enlists all those great men, like Renan, Parker, Thomas Carlyle, to whom 
the Bible is the mightiest record of a people's life and spiritual aspiration, 
the greatest piece of literature in existence. In that passage Talmage is 
at his very best and strongest. 

THE CASE AGAINST INGERSOLL. 

He then proceeds to try Ingersoll in the following manner: ^'Perhaps 
you had better give the Bible a trial before you condemn it," he says. 
"Well, we will give it a trial. I impanel this whole audience as a jury to 
render their verdict in this case — Infidelity, the plaintiff, versus Christianity, 
the defendant. Twelve jurors are ordinarily enough in a case, but in this 
case, vaster in importance than any other, 1 this morning impanel all the 
thousands of people here gathered as a jury, and I ask them silently to 
affirm that they will well and truly try this issue of traverse joined between 
Infidelity, the plaintiff, and Christianity, the defendant, so help you God. 

"The jury impaneled, call your first witness. Robert G. Ingersoll! 
'Here!' Swear the witness. But how are you to swear the witness? I know 
of only two ways of taking an oath in a court-room. The one is by kissing 
the Bible, and the other is by lifting the hand. I cannot ask him to swear 
by the Bible, because he considers that a pack of lies, and therefore it could 
give no solemnity to his oath. I cannot ask him to lift the hand, for that 
seems to imply the existence of a God, and that is a fact in dispute. So 
I swear him by the rings of Saturn, and the spots on the sun, and the cav- 
erns in the moon, and the Milky Way, and the nebular hypothesis, that he 
will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in this case 
between Infidelity, the plaintiff, and Christianity, the defendant. 

"Let me say that I know nothing of the private character of that person, 
neither do. I want to know. I have no taste for exploring private character. 
I shall deal with him as a public teacher. I shall not be diverted from this 
by the fact that he has again and again in lectures and in interviews assailed 
my name. I have no personal animosity. I invite him the Sabbath after 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



423 



he has changed his views in regard to the Christian religion to stand here 
where I stand and preach his first sermon. I deal with him only as a pubHc 
teacher. 

AN UNF0RTI71TATE SOPHISTRY. 

''You say, Why preach these three or four sermons which I intend to 
preach in answering the champion blasphemer of America? Am I afraid 
that Christianity will be overborne by this scoffing harlequinade? Oh, no. 
Do you know how near he has come to stopping Christianity? I will tell 
you how near he has come to impeding the progress of Christianity in the 
world. About as much as one snowflake on the track will impede the half- 
past three o'clock Chicago lightning express train. Perhaps not so much as 
that. It is more like a Switzerland insect floating through the air impeding 
an Alpine avalanche. The Sabbath after Mr. Ingersoll in this region extin- 
guished Christianity, we received in this church over four hundred souls 
in public and beautiful consecration of themselves to Christ, and that only a 
small illustration of the universal advance. Within ten years Mr. Ingersoll 
has done his most conspicuous stopping of Christianity, and he has stopped 
it at the following rate: In the first fifty years of this century, there were 
three milHon people who professed the faith of Christ. In the last ten years, 
there have been three million people connecting themselves by profession 
with the Church of Christ. In other words, the last ten years have accom- 
plished as much as the first fifty years of this century." 

This is one of those glaring sophisms which we alluded to in the opening 
of this chapter. It is unfortunate that Talmage should have weakened his 
case by employing it. In the beginning of the century the entire population 
"professed the faith of Christ." For three million out of three million people 
to profess a thing is a different proposition from having three new million 
out of seventy million profess it. When Talmage says the last ten years have 
accomplished as much as the first fifty years of the century he leaves entirely 
out of account the increase in population which tremendously cuts down the 
ratio of those who are professing Christians to those who are not. One may 
regret the fact as much as one will, but when one deliberately ignores it, and 
in fact attempts to convey a wholly different impression as to the fact, one 



424 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



commits a fatal error in argument. If the ''false in part, false in all" principle 
which he applies to Ingersoll were applied here to himself we should be 
obliged to throw out his entire testimony. We do not, however, wish to 
throw it out, for the reason that some of it is true and valuable. 

He continues: ''My fear is not that Ingersoll will arrest Christianity. I 
preach these sermons for the benefit of individuals. There are young men 
w^ho, through his teachings, have given up their religion and soon after gave 
up their morals. IngersoU's teachings triumphant would fill all the peniten- 
tiaries and the gambling hells and houses of shame on the continent — on 
the planet. No divine system of morals, and in twenty years we would have a 
hell on earth eclipsing in abomination the hell that Mr. Ingersoll has so much 
laughed at. My fear is not that Christianity in general shall be impeded, but 
I want to persuade these young men to get aboard the train instead of throw- 
ing themselves across the track. God is going to save this world anyhow, 
and the only question is whether you and I will refuse to get into the life- 
boat. Besides that, I want to put into the mouths of these young men argu- 
ments by which they can defend themselves in the profession of their faith 
in Christ when they are bombarded." The young men, however, must be on 
their guard to weigh Talmage's arguments before they use them. It would 
be unfortunate to advance an argument like that of the three million before 
a keen assailant of the orthodox faith. One who so advanced it would be 
in the position of those who, as Sir Thomas Browne said in the seventeenth 
century, "have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain themselves 
a trophy to the enemies of truth." 

"FALSE IN PART, FALSE TS ALK" 

: Coming back from his digression, Talmage says: "But that trial comes 
on. The jury has been impaneled. The first witness has been called. In 
the opening sentences of my sermon I gave Mr. IngersoU's charges against 
Christianity. Now, my friends, it is a principle settled in all court rooms and 
among all intelligent people, 'false in part, false in all.' If a witness is found 
to be making a misrepresentation on the stand it does not make any differ- 
ence what he testifies to after; it all g-oes overboard, The judge, the jury, 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



425 



every common-sense man says, 'false in part, false in all.' Now, if I can show 
you, and I will show you, the Lord helping me, that Mr. Ingersoll makes 
misrepresentations in one respect, or two respects, or three respects, I will 
demand that, as intelligent men and as fair-minded women, you throw over- 
board his entire testimony. If he will misrepresent in one thing he will mis- 
represent all the way through. 'False in one, false in all.' 

'In the first place he raises a roystering laugh against the Bible by saying, 
'is this book true? The gentleman who wrote it said that the world was made 
out of nothing; I cannot imagine nothing being made into something.' In 
nearly all his lectures he begins with that gigantic misrepresentation. I offer 
a thousand dollars' reward to any man w^ho will show me any passage in the 
Bible that tells me that the world was made out of nothing. The very first 
passage says it was made out of God's omnipotence. 'In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth.' I do not ask you to refer to your Bible. 
Refer to your memory that you may see it is an IngersoUian misstatement — 
a misstatement from stem to stern, and from cutwater to taffrail, and from the 
top of the mainmast down to the barnacles on the bottom. If he had taken 
some obscure passage he would not so soon have been found out, but he has 
taken the most conspicuous, the most memorable, the most magnificent pas- 
sage, all geological and astronomical discovery only adding to its grandeur. 
'In the beginning.' There you can roll in ten million years if you want to. 
There is no particular date given — no contest between science and revelation. 
You may roll in there ten million years, if you want to. Though the world 
may have been in process of creation for millions of years, suddenly and 
quickly, and in one w^eek, it may have been fitted up for man's residence. 
Just as a great mansion may have been many years in building, and yet in 
one week it may be curtained and chandeliered and cushioned and uphol- 
stered for a bride and groom. 

"You are not compelled to believe that the w^orld was made in our six 
days; you are not compelled to believe that. It may not have been a day 
of twenty-four hours, the day spoken of in the first chapter; it may have been 
God's day, and a thousand years with him are as one day. 'And the evening 
and the morning were the first day' — God's day. 'And the evening and the 



426 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



morning were the second day' — God's day. *And the evening and the morn- 
ing were the sixth day' — God's day. You and I living in the seventh day, 
the Sabbath of the world, the day of Gospel redemption, the grandest day of 
all the week in which each day may have been made up of thousands of years. 
Can you tell me how a man can get his mind and soul into such a blas- 
phemous twist as to scoff at that first chapter of Genesis, its verses billows 
of light surging up from sapphire seas of glory!" This, in our opinion, is 
more than mere pretty rhetoric. It is the truest criticism that can be made 
upon Robert Ingersoll — a Philistine insensibility to the grandeur of the 
grandest poetry this world has made. 

LIGHT BEFORE THE SUN. 

In contrast to '^sapphire seas of glory," Talmage places Ingersoll's scof- 
fing: 

''Come now," he says, ''and let Mr. Ingersoll laugh at the fact that the 
world is made out of nothing. He rings his changes on that word nothing. 
He has gone all through the cities telling what every man, woman and child 
of common-sense knows is a misrepresentation. There is as much difference 
between Mr. Ingersoll's statement and the truth as between nothing and 
omnipotence. Now I will take Mr. Ingersoll's first misrepresentation, and I 
nail it so high that North, South, East and West may see it and remember it. 
Wilful misrepresentation! I repeat, there is as much difference between his 
statement and the Bible statement as between nothing and omnipotence. 
Now I demand, gentlemen of the jury, that you throw overboard his entire 
testimony. False in part, false in all — all that he has testified to in the past, 
all that he will testify to in the future — all overboard, by the common rules 
of evidence. 

"I take a step further in the impeachment of this witness. One would 
have thought that after misrepresenting the first passage he would have 
rested from his labors and given us some honest exposition. Oh, no! He 
rolls from side to side with laughter. He runs up and down the whole gamut 
of cachinnation. He can hardly contain his mirthfulness. He swoops upon 
the third and fourth verses of the same chapter in caricature and says: 'Ha, 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



427 



ha! the Bible represents that light was created on Monday, and the sun was 
not created until Thursday. Just think of it! a book declaring that light was 
created three days before the sun shone.' Here Mr. Ingersoll shows his 
geological and chemical and astronomical ignorance. If Mr. Ingersoll had 
asked any schoolboy on his way home from one of our high schools, 'My 
lad, can there be any Hght without the shining of the sun?' the lad would 
have said, 'Yes, sir; heat and electricity emit light independent of the sun. 
Besides that, when the earth was in process of condensation, it was sur- 
rounded by thick vapors and the discharge of many volcanoes in the primary 
period, and all this obscuration may have hindered the Hght of the sun from 
falling on the earth until that Thursday morning.' Beside that, he would 
say: 'Mr. Ingersoll, don't you know that David Brester and Herschel, the 
astronomer, and all the modern men of their class, agree in the fact that the 
sun is not hght, that it is an opaque mass, that it is only the candlestick that 
holds the light, a phosphorescent atmosphere floating around it, changing 
and changing, so it is not to be at all wondered at that not until that Thurs- 
day morning its light fell on the earth? Beside that, Mr. Ingersoll,' the lad 
of the high school would say, 'the rocks in crystallization emit light. There 
is hght from a thousand surfaces, the alkalies, for instance.' The lad would 
have gone on to say 'the metalHc bases emit light.' The lad would have gone 
on still further to say: 'Mr. Ingersoll, don't you know there was a time in 
the history of the world when there were thousands of miles of Hquid granite 
flaming with light?' The lad would have gone on and told Mr. Ingersoll that 
by observation it has been found that there are burned-out volcanoes in other 
worlds which, when they were in explosion and activity, must have cast forth 
an insufferable Hght, throwing a glare all over our earth. And the boy would 
have asked him also if he had ever heard of the Aurora Borealis or the Aurora 
Anchalis. And then the boy would have unbuckled the strap from his bundle 
of books and read from one entitled 'Connection of the Physical Sciences,' 
this paragraph: 

" 'Captain Bonnycastle, coming up the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the 17th 
of September, 1826, was aroused by the mate of the vessel in great alarm 
from an unusual appearance. It was a starlight night, when suddenly the 



428 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL, 



sky became overcast. In the direction of the high land of Cornwallis County 
an instantaneous and intensely vivid light, resembling the aurora, shot out 
on the hitherto gloomy and dark sea, on the lee bow that was so brilliant, it 
lighted everything distinctly, even to the masthead. The light spread over 
the whole sea between the two shores, and the waves, which before had been 
tranquil, became agitated. Captain Bonnycastle describes the scene as that 
of a blazing sheet of awful and most brilliant light — a long and vivid line of 
light that showed the face of the high frowning land abreast. The sky 
became lowering and more intensely obscure. Long, tortuous lines of light 
showed immense numbers of large fish darting about as if in consternation. 
The topsail yard and mizzen-boom were lighted by the glare as if gaslights 
had been burned directly below them, and until just before daybreak at four 
o'clock the most minute objects were distinctly visible.' 

''Mr. Ingersoll has only to go to one of our high schools to learn there 
are ten thousand sources of light besides the light of the sun. But if he had 
been in one of the classes in our high schools, a class in astronomy, or geol- 
ogy or chemistry, the impatient teacher would have said to him: 'Robert, go 
down to the foot and be in disgrace — be in disgrace for your stupidity!' This 
is not wilful misrepresentation in this case on the part of Mr. Ingersoll. He 
does not know any better. It is the most profound and most disgusting 
ignorance ever exhibited on a lecturer's platform in America when he says 
there cannot be any light, or implies there cannot be any light except that 
which comes from the sun. 

CHABaE OF IGNORANCE. 

'Tn the first case which I showed you it was wilful misrepresentation. 
In this case it is ignorance, geological and astronomical and chemical. But 
whether wilful or ignorant misrepresentation, either and both will impeach 
Robert G. Ingersoll as incompetent to give testimony in this case between 
Infidelity, the plaintiff, and Christianity, the defendant. I nail on the top 
of the temple of scepticism this misrepresentation by the champion blas- 
phemer of America. He misrepresented in the first case. He has misrep- 
resented in the second case. Now I demand, gentlemen of the jury, that you 
throw overboard his testimony. 'False in part, false in all.' " 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



429 



We do not wish, in this book, to defend the attacks of Mr. Ingersoll upon 
the Bible, but it is our duty not only to give a just estimate of the work of 
Talmage, pointing out, to the best of our abiUty, wherein that work is strong 
and wherein weak, but we also feel it our duty to warn the young Christians-- 
to whom Talmage is here furnishing arguments against infidelity that the 
great orator and mover of men's hearts is not invariably a safe intellectual 
guide. We should dislike to see some earnest young soul employing this 
argument that light existed before the sun in the form in which it is here 
presented. The sun, which is the center of our planetary system, was not 
the first nor will it be the last sun which the infinite womb of the universe 
has brought to birth. Light, therefore, most certainly existed before our 
sun. The sun is one of the stars, and there are older stars. But when Tal- 
mage tries to make out that the earth and earthly lights were brought forth 
before the sun it takes less knowledge of science than he attributes to his 
high-school boy to refute him. That the sun and its planets are of equal age, 
being different parts of one whole, is a scientific fact as well known as that 
the root and the stem of an oak spring simultaneously upward and down- 
ward from an acorn. All the facts adduced by Talmage are marshalled to the 
false conclusion that the earth is older than the sun. The absurdity of the 
idea becomes manifest when we ask ''What was the earth doing before it 
began revolving around the sun?" If older than the sun it must have origi- 
nally done something else. There is no use denying what is known and 
proved, for sooner or later truth once discovered will be known to all men. 
That the entire solar system in its mist-like form revolved about a center, that 
this center condensing became the sun, and that outlying parts of the great 
wheel, condensing, became planets is no longer an hypothesis — it is a scien- 
tific theory which explains the facts, and is accepted as the truth. Let no 
Christian advance an argument based on anything but truth, for the recoil 
will do the cause more harm than good. 

THE STORY OF NOAH'S AKK. 

■T take a step further," continues Talmage, "in impeaching this witness 
against Christianity. He sharpens all his witticisms to destroy our belief in 



430 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



the ancient deluge and Noah's ark. He says that from the account there 
it must have rained eight hundred feet of water each day in order that it 
might be fifteen cubits above the hills. He says that the ark could not have 
been large enough to contain 'two of every sort/ for there would have been 
hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of creatures! He says 
that these creatures would have come from all lands and all zones! He says 
there was only one small window in the ark, and that would not have given 
fresh air to keep the animals inside the ark from suffocation! Then he winds 
up that part of the story by saying that the ark finally landed on a mountain 
seventeen thousand feet high. He says he does not believe the story. Neither 
do I! There is no such story in the Bible. I will tell you what the Bible 
story is. I must say that I have changed my mind in regard to some mat- 
ters which once were to me very mysterious. They are no more mysterious. 
This is the key to the facts. This is the story of an eye-witness, Noah! his 
story incorporated afterward by Moses in the account. Noah described the 
scene just as it appeared to him. He saw the flood and he fathomed its depth. 
As far as eye could reach everything was covered up, from horizon to horizon, 
or as it says, 'under the whole heaven.' He did not refer to the Sierra 
Nevadas, or to Mount Washington, for America had not been discovered, 
or, if it had been discovered, he could not have seen so far off. He is giving 
the testimony of an eye-witness. God speaks after the manner of men when 
He says everything went under, and Noah speaks after the manner of men 
when he says everything did go under. An eye-witness. There is no need 
of thinking that the kangaroo leaped the ocean or that the polar bear came 
down from the ice. 

"Why did the deluge come? It came for the purpose of destroying the 
outrageous inhabitants of the then thinly populated earth, nearly all the 
population probably very near the ark before it was launched. What would 
have been the use of submerging North and South America or Europe or 
Africa when they were not inhabited? Mr. Ingersoll most grossly misrep- 
resents when he says that in order to have that depth of water it must have 
rained eight hundred feet every day. The Bible distinctly declares that the 
most of the flood rose instead of falling. Before the account where it says 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



431 



'the windows of heaven were opened' it says 'all the fountains of the great 
deep were broken up.' All geologists agree in saying that there are caverns 
in the earth filled with water, and they rushed forth, and all the lakes and 
rivers forsook their bed. What am I to think, and what are you to think 
of a man who, ignoring this earthquake spoken of in the Bible as preceding 
the falling of the rain, and for the purpose of making a laugh at the Bible, 
will say it must have rained over eight hundred feet every day? Taking the 
last half instead of the first half. The fountains of the great deep were broken 
up, and then the windows of heaven were opened. Is it a strange thing that 
we should be asked to believe in this flood of the Bible when geologists tell 
us that again and again and again the dry earth has been drowned out? Just 
open your geolog}', and you will read of twenty floods. Is it not a strange 
thing that the infidel scientist wanting us to believe in the twenty floods of 
geological discovery should, as soon as we believe in the one flood of the 
Bible, pronounce us asinine and non compos mentis? 

THE SIZE or THE ARK. 

"Well, then, another thing, in regard to the size of the ark. Instead of 
being a mud-scow, as some of these infidels would have us understand, it 
was a magnificent ship, nearly as large as our Great Eastern, three times the 
size of an ordinary man-of-war. At the time in the world when shipbuilding 
was unknown God had this vessel constructed, which turned out to be almost 
in the same proportions as our stanchest modern vessels. After thousands 
of years of experimenting in naval architecture and in ship-carpentr}' we 
have at last got up to Noah's ark, that ship leading all the fleets of the world 
on all the oceans. Well, Noah saw the animal creation going into this ark. 
He gave the account of an eye-witness. They were the animals from the 
region where he lived; for the most part they were animals useful to man, 
and if noxious insects or poisonous reptiles went in, it was only to discipline 
the patience and to keep alert the generations after the flood. He saw them 
and he gives the account of an eye-witness. They went in two and two of 
all flesh. 

"Two or three years ago I was on a steamer on the river Tay, and I came 



432 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL, 



to Perth, Scotland. I got off, and I saw the most wonderful agricultural 
show that I had ever witnessed. There were horses and cattle such as Rosa 
Bonheur never sketches, and there were dogs such as the loving pencil of 
Edwin Landseer never portrayed, and there were sheep and fowl and crea- 
tures of all sorts. Suppose that 'two and two' of all the creatures of that 
agricultural show were put upon the Tay steamer to be transported to Dun- 
dee, and the next day I should be writing home to America and giving an 
account of the occurrence, I would have used the same general phraseology 
that Noah used in regard to the embarkation of the brute creation in the 
ark — I would have said that they went in two and two of every sort. I 
would not have meant six hundred thousand. A common-sense man myself, 
I would suppose that the people who read the letter were common-sense 
people. 

" 'But how could you get them into the ark?' says Mr. Ingersoll with a 
great sneer. 'How could they be induced to go into the ark?' He would 
have to push them out and drive them in and coax them in. Could not the 
same God who gave instinct to the animal inspire that instinct to seek for 
shelter from the storm? However, nothing more than ordinary animal instinct 
was necessary. Have you never been in the country when an August thun- 
derstorm was coming up and heard the cattle moan at the bars to get in, 
and seen the affrighted fowl go upon the perch at noonday, and heard the 
afifrighted dog and cat calling at the door, supphcating entrance? And are 
you surprised that in that age of the world, when there were fewer places of 
shelter for dumb beasts, at the muttering and rumbhng and flashing and 
quaking and darkening of an approaching deluge, the animal creation came 
moaning and beating to the sloping embankment reaching up to the ancient 
horses and cattle and sheep and dogs, but I never had a horse, or a cow, or a 
sheep or a dog that was so stupid it did not know enough to come in when it 
rained! Yet Mr. Ingersoll cannot understand how they could get in. It is 
amazing to him." 

HEARTS, NOT BRAINS, INSPIRED. 

We need not point out that Talmage here palpably begs the question. 
There is no doubt that the horses, dogs, cows and sheep which he adduces 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



433 



in evidence could be got into the ark; the question was not as to domestic 
animals at all, but as to vrild animals like deer, savage animals like tigers, 
creatures like rock-pythons. If there were at the beginning of the voyage 
two deer and two tigers there would be after several months for tigers to 
get hungry in how many deer? The Great Eastern would not be large enough 
to hold two each of the multitude of living fauna. We will merely say that 
the real leaders of modern Christian thought no longer hold as Talmage 
vainly attempts to hold to the literal truth of Bible stories. God inspired 
the hearts of those ancient writers who wrote Genesis and the rest, but He 
did not put into their brains exact knowledge. With inspired hearts they 
used what knowledge they had — just as Dante in his Divine Comedy employs 
the science of his own, not the science of a later time. To try now to twist 
that ancient science into agreement with our more exact modern science is 
simply to exhaust the patience of intelligent men. 

IGNOBANCE OF INGEESOLL. 

For the sake of the example of Talmage's argumentative style, however, 
we give the close of this first answer to Ingersoll. "And then," continues 
Talmage, ''that one window in the ark which afforded such poor ventilation 
to the creatures there assembled — that sm.all window^ in the ark which excites 
so much mirthfulness on the part of the great infidel. If he had known as 
much Hebrew as you could put on your little finger nail, he would have 
know^n that that word translated window^ there means window course, a 
whole range of lights. This ignorant infidel does not know a window pane 
from twenty windows. So, if there is any criticism of the ark, there seems 
to be too much window for such a long storm. If he had studied Hebrew 
two weeks he would have been saved the display of that appalling ignorance, 
that most disgraceful ignorance, when he scofTs and scoffs and scoffs and 
chuckles and chuckles and chuckles over the small window in the ark. This 
infidel says that during the long storm the window must have been kept shut, 
and hence, no air. There are people in this house to-day who, all the way 
from Liverpool to Barnegat lighthouse, and for two weeks were kept under 
deck, the hatches battened down because of the storm. Some of you, in 



434 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



the old-time sailing vessels, were kept nearly a month with the hatches dowri 
because of some long storm. 

'Tor the tenth or the fifteenth misrepresentation by Mr. Ingersoll he 
says that the ark landed on a mountain seventeen thousand feet high, and 
that, of course, as soon as the animals came forth they would all be frozen 
in the ice! Here comes in Mr. Ingersoll's geographical ignorance. He does 
not seem to know that Ararat is not merely the name for a mountain, but 
for a hilly district, and that it may have been a hill one hundred feet high, 
or five hundred or a thousand feet high, on which the ark ahghted. Noah 
measured the depth of the water above the hill, and it is fifteen cubits or 
twenty-seven feet. But in order to raise a laugh against the Holy Scriptures 
Mr. Ingersoll lifts the ark seventeen thousand feet high, showing an ignor- 
ance of just that altitude! 

'We are not dependent on the Bible for the story of the flood entirely. 
All ages and all literatures have traditions, broken traditions, indistinct tradi- 
tions, but still traditions. The old books of the Persians tell about the flood 
at the time of Ahriman, who so polluted the earth that it had to be washed 
by a great storm. The traditions of the Chaldeans say that in the time when 
Xisuthrus was king there was a great flood, and that he put his family and 
his friends in a large vessel, and all outside of them were destroyed, and after 
a while the birds went forth and they came back and their claws were tinged 
with mud. Lucian and Ovid, celebrated writers, who had never seen the 
Bible, describe a flood in the time of Deucalion. He took his friends into a 
boat, and the animals came running to him in pairs. So, all lands, and all 
ages, and all literatures, seem to have a broken and indistinct tradition of a 
calamity which Moses, here incorporating Noah's account, so grandly, so 
beautifully, so accurately, so solemnly records. 

"But I must halt in this argument, as in a great trial sometimes an attor- 
ney will stop for lack of time to finish, and I must on other Sabbath mornings 
take up this subject. I have only opened the door of a subject it will take 
me other Sabbath mornings to explore. I have impeached Robert G. Inger- 
soll for having misrepresented once, twice, thrice. I demand that you put 
into execution the principle of every court room, gentlemen of the jury, and 



TALMAGE ON INGERSOLL. 



435 



throw overboard his entire testimony. 'False in part, false in all/ I have 
this morning only discussed the cleanest part of Mr. IngersoU's infidelity — 
the best part of Mr. IngersoU's infidelity. There are depths below depths, 
and I shall go on and say all I have to say on this subject. 

"My prayer is that the God who created the world, not out of nothing 
but out of His own omnipotence, may create us anew in Christ Jesus; and 
that the God who made light three days before the sun shone may kindle in 
our souls a light that will burn on long after the sun has expired; and that 
the God who ordered the ark built and kept open more than one hundred 
years that the antediluvians might enter it for shelter may graciously incline 
us to accept the invitation which this morning rolls in music from the throne, 
saying: 'Come thou and all thy house into the ark.' " 

On the following Sunday Mr. Talmage kept his promise, and preached 
once more on Ingersollism. We need not point out that entertaining as his 
parallel between Ingersoll and Adam's rib and a dog with a bone, it is not 
argument. 

"Professor Morse thought he was making a wonderful invention when he 
found out the magnetic telegraph; but Job describes electrical communi- 
cation thousands of years before, when he says: 'Canst thou send lightnings 
that they may go and say unto thee, here we are?' " 

We interrupt, as a man sitting in a congregation may not interrupt a 
preacher, to point out that Job's idea was exactly the reverse of what Tal- 
mage here represents it to be. Talmage tries to make his hearer think Job 
believed the lightning could be sent with messages. It seems to us evident 
that Job meant the exact opposite, and by citing it as he does Talmage weakens 
his case. A similar twisting of ancient words into modern meanings char- 
acterizes many of the other passages here cited by him. Let us repeat that 
great as Talmage is in some respects, especially in his power over words that 
reach the heart, he is, not always a great thinker ; nor does he always furnish 
good arguments to young Christians. If they repeat them in the society of 
educated men they will simply be refuted and put to confusion. 

We turn gladly from this chapter, in which we see Talmage at his weak- 
est, to the consideration of his sermon against rum, where he is at his best. 



THE AWFUL RAVAGES OF ALCOHOL ALLEGORY OF THE FOUR FIENDS — .WHAT 

THE INEBRIATE SUFFERS LOSS OF PROPERTY^ POSITION AND FAMILY 

IMPOSSIBILITY OF REFORM WITHOUT THE HELP OF GOD '^O THOU RE- 
CRUITING OFFICER OF THE PIT, I HATE THEE/' 

It was thought in the days when Dr. Talmage began his preaching 
against the evils that confronted every-day life that a minister was going out 
of his province when he chose to lecture on questions of sociology instead 
of preaching the gospels. But the wise doctor combined earthly affairs 
with those of the hereafter in such a way as to always bring up inside the 
church, no matter how material his subject might be. 

His attacks on the theater, whisky drinking, tobacco and other habits 
that lead to ill-health, if not to moral destruction, were thought to be far 
beyond the bounds of rational argument. Even the great Gough himself 
could not paint the horrors of delirium occasioned by excessive use of alcohol 
in more vivid and startling colors than Talmage. But today the most widely 
circulated daily papers in the country are printing editorials quite as strong 
and stirring. In the magazine supplement of a great Chicago daily (Sunday 
issue), April 20th, 1902, in type of large proportions and with a half page 
illustration, appeared the following: 

''Once more we venture to discuss with readers the important question 
of drink. 

''Once more we invite young men and old to consider whisky, not from 
the point of view of one who seeks to impress his own will upon others, but 
from the point of view of each man's individual interest and duty. 

"The hope which underHes these editorials is this — that they may supply 

arguments useful to good men and women anxious to save sons, or brothers, 

or husbands, or friends from the effects of excessive drink. 

436 



TALMAGE ON RUM. 



437 



"A man may have in his Hfe a thousand enemies — altogether they will 
not be as dangerous as the one enemy, whisky. That enemy works with 
an intelligence and a force equaled by no other. It attacks first of all the 
brain. It conquers the intellect and at one stroke renders the entire human 
being useless, destroying simultaneously his moral qualities, his mental 
faculties and his material usefulness. 

"When a man is shot in the leg he has still three of his Hmbs to work 
with and his brain to guide their work. 

"When the worst of diseases, even consumption, attacks a man the brain 
at least is spared; it works honestly and keeps the man respected while his 
Ufe lasts. 

"Whisky is a poison and, while its work is sometimes slow, it acts as do 
other poisons. It destroys the seat of moral activity as prussic acid destroys 
the physical organism. 

"A hideous thing about the worst enemy of civilization is this: 

"It unfits a man for all the good work of Hfe. 

"It adds to a man's capacity for evil. 

"A hundred times in any year you may read in the daily newspapers this: 

" 'The murderer had often threatened that he would kill his victim. Little 
attention was paid to his threats. But that day it was noticed that he was 
drinking very hard and that night the murder was committed.' 

"Whisky, the poison that destroys the affection and morality, the enemy 
that wrecks ability and defeats ambition, provides the incentive, the strength 
and determination for crimes." 

On The Plague of Alcohol Dr. Talmage says : 

"This was the worst of the ten plagues. The destroying angel at midnight 
flapped his wing over the land, and there was one dead in each house. 
Lamentation and mourning and woe through all Egypt. That destroying 
angel has fled the earth, but a far worse has come. He sweeps through these 
cities. It is the destroying angel of strong drink. Far worse devastation is 
wrought by this second than by the first. The calamity in America is worse 
than the calamity in Egypt. There are thousands of the slain, millions of the 
slain. No arithmetic can calculate their number. I am glad to see that the 



438 



TALMAGE ON RUM. 



decorations of Thanksgiving Day have been retained until this hour, but as 
last Thursday we used them as symbols of the goodness and kindness of God 
to the American people today I shall use them for a different purpose. Who 
could think that the ripe clusters of the vineyard and the golden sheaves of 
the harvest-field could be used for the world's damage and the world's death? 

FABLE OF THE FOUR FIENDS. 

"Once upon a time four fiends met in the lost world. They resolved that 
the people of our earth were too happy, and these infernals came forth to 
our earth on an embassy chief. The one fiend said, T'll take charge of the 
vineyards.' Another said, 'I'll take charge of the grain-fields.' Another said, 
T'll take charge of the dairy.' Another said, T'll take charge of the music' 
The four fiends met in the great Sahara Desert, with skeleton fingers clutched 
each other in handshake of fidelity, kissed each other good-bye with lip of 
blue flame, and parted on their mission. The fiend of the vineyard came 
in one bright morning among the grapes, and sat down on a root of twisted 
grape-vine in sheer discouragement. The fiend knew not how to damage 
the vineyard, or, through it, how to damage the world. The grapes were so 
ripe and beautiful and luscious. They bewitched the air with their sweetness. 
There seemed to be so much health in every bunch, and while the fiend sat 
there in utter indignation and disappointment he clutched a cluster of grapes 
and squeezed it in perfect spite, and lo! his hand was red with the blood of 
the vineyard, and the fiend said. That reminds me of the blood of broken 
hearts; I'll strip the vineyard, and I'll squeeze out all the juice of the grapes, 
and I'll allow the juices of the grapes to stand until they rot, and I'll call 
the process fermentation.' And there was a great vat prepared, and people 
came with their cups and their pitchers, and they dipped up the blood of the 
grapes, and they drank, and drank, and went away drinking, and they drank 
until they fell in long lines of death, so that when the fiend of the vineyard 
wanted to return to his home in the pit he stepped from carcass to carcass, 
and walked down amid a great causeway of the dead. 

"Then the second fiend came into the grain-field. He waded chin-deep 
amid the barley and the rye. He heard all the grain talking about bread, and 



TALMAGE ON RUM, ^ 439 

prosperous husbandry, and thrifty homes. He thrust his long arms into the 
grain-field, and he pulled up the grain, and he threw it into the water, and 
he made beneath it great fires — fires lighted with a spark from his own heart 
— and there was a grinding and a mashing and a stench, and the people came 
with their bottles and they dipped up the fiery liquid, and they drank, and 
they blasphemed, and they staggered, and they fought, and they rioted, and 
they murdered, and the fiend of the grain-field .was so pleased with their 
behavior that he changed his residence from the pit to a whisky barrel, and 
there he sat by the door of the bunghole laughing in high merriment at the 
thought that out of anything so harmless as the grain of the field he might 
turn this world into a seeming pandemonium. The fiend of the dairy saw 
the cows coming home from the pasture field, full uddered, and as the maid 
milked he said, 'I'll soon spoil all that mess. I'll add to it brandy, sugar and 
nutmeg, and I'll stir it into a milk punch, and children will drink it, and some 
of the temperance people will drink it, and if I can do them no more harm 
ril give them a headache, and then I'll hand them over to the more vigorous 
fiends of the Satanic delegation.' And then the fiend of the dairy leaped 
upon the shelf and danced until the long row of shining milk-pans quaked. 

"The fiend of music entered a grog-shop, and there were but few cus- 
tomers. Finding few customers, he swept the circuit of the city, and he 
gathered up the musical instruments, and after night-fall he marshalled a 
band, and the trombones blew, and the cymbals clapped, and the drums 
beat, and the bugles called, and the people crowded in, and they swung 
around in merry dance, each one with a wine-glass in his hand, and the 
dance became wilder, and stronger, and rougher, until the room shook, and 
the glasses cracked, and the floor broke, and the crowd dropped intO' hell. 
Then the four fiends — the fiend of the vineyard, and of the grain-field, and of 
the dairy, and of the music-hall — went back to their home, and they held 
high carnival, because their work had been so well done, and Satan rose from 
his throne and announced that there was no danger of the earth's redemp- 
tion, so long as these four fiends could pay such tax to the diabolic. And 
then all the demons, and all the sprites, and all the fiends filled their glasses, 
and clicked them, and cried, Xet us drink — drink to the everlasting pros- 



440 



TALMAGE ON RUM. 



parity of the liquor traffic. Here's to woe, and darkness, and murder, and 
death. Drink! Drink!' 

AWFUL EVILS OF STRONG DSINK. 

''But whether by allegory or by appalling statistics this subject is pre- 
sented, you know as well as I that it is impossible to exaggerate the evils 
of strong drink. A plague ! A plague ! I shall show you that it is a plague 
of suffering to the inebriate. In the first place it is a plague of suffering to 
the inebriate, because it is to him a loss of good name. God has so arranged 
it that no man loses his reputation except by his own act. The world may 
assault a man, and all the powers of darkness may assault him — they cannot 
capture him so long as his heart is pure and his life is pure. All the pow- 
ers of earth and hell can not take that Gibraltar. If a man is right, 
all the bombardment of the world for five, ten, twenty, forty years, will only 
strengthen him in his position. So that all you have to do is to keep yourself 
right. Never mind the world. Let it say what it will. It can do you no 
damage. But as soon as it is whispered, 'He drinks,' and it can be proved, 
he begins to go down. What clerk can get a position with such a reputa- 
tion? What store wants him? What church of God wants him for a mem- 
ber? What dying man wants him for an executor? He drinks! I stand 
before hundreds of young men — and I say it not in flattery — splendid young 
men who have their reputation as their only capital. Your father gave you 
a good education or as good an education as he could afford to give you. 
He started you in city life. He could furnish you no^ means, but he has 
surrounded you with Christian influences and a good memory of the past. 
Now, young man, under God you are with your own right arm to achieve 
your fortune, and as your reputation is your only capital, do not bring upon 
it suspicion by going in and out of liquor establishments, or by an odor of 
your breath, or by any glare of your eye, or by any unnatural flush on your 
cheek. You lose your reputation, and you lose your capital. 

SYMPATHY FOR ALL. 

'The subject comes over me this morning Hke the waves of the Atlantic 
for power. Oh ! when I see the influences abroad in Brooklyn and New York 



TALMAGE ON RUM. 



441 



to destroy young men, I hardly know what to say. For the young men 
themselves all sympathy have I, and all compassion. For those who deal 
out the deadly stuff, all pity that they should bring upon themselves the 
condemnation of good society and the retributions of God. But for the 
liquor establishments themselves, for the rum-selling restaurants, may God 
consume them with the brightness of His coming! 

"The inebriate suffers also the plague in the fact that he loses his self- 
respect. When you destroy a man's self-respect there is not much left of 
him. Just as soon as a man finds he is a slave, he loses his self-respect. Then 
a man will do things he would not do otherwise, he will say things he would 
not say otherwise. 

"The fact is that a man can not stop, or he would stop now. He is bound 
hand and foot of the Philistines, and they have shorn his locks and put his 
eyes out, and made him grind in a mill of great horror. After he is three- 
fourths gone in this slavery, the first thing he will be anxious to impress 
you with is that he can stop at any time he wants to. His family become 
alarmed in regard to him, and they say, *Now, do stop this, after awhile it 
will get the mastery of you.' *Oh! no,' he says, T can stop at any time, 
I can stop now, I can stop to-morrow.' His most confidential friends say, 
'Why, I am afraid you are losing your balance with that habit, you are going 
a little further than you can afford to go, you had better stop.' 'Oh! no,' 
he says, T can stop at any time, I can stop now.' He goes on, further and 
further. He can not stop. I will prove it. He loves himself, and he knows 
that strong drink is depleting him in body, mind, and soul. He knows that 
he has less self-control, less equipoise of temper than he used to have. Why 
does he not stop? Because he cannot stop. I will prove it by going still 
further. He loves his wife and children. He sees that his habits are bring- 
ing disgrace upon his home. The probabilities are they will ruin his wife 
and his children. He sees all this, and he loves them. Why does he not 
stop? He can not stop. I had a very dear friend, generous to a fault. He 
had given thousands, tens of thousands of dollars to Bible societies, tract 
societies, missionary societies, asylums for the poor, the halt, the lame, the 
blind, the imbecile. I do not believe for twenty years anybody asked him 



1 

442 TALMAGE ON RUM, 

for a dollar, or fifty dollars, or a hundred dollars for charity but he gave it. 
I never heard of anybody asking him for help but he gave it. But he was 
under the power of strong drink, and he went on, down, down, down. His 
family implored him, saying, 'You are going too far in that habit, you had 
better stop.* He replied, 'I can stop any time — I am my own master, I can 
stop.' He went on, down, down. His friends advised and cautioned him. 
He said, 'Don't be afraid of me — I am my own master, I can stop now, I 
know what I am doing.' He went on down until he had the delirium tre- 
mens. On down until he had the delirium tremens twice. After the second 
time the doctor said, 'If you ever have an attack like this again you will die, 
you had better stop.' He said, 1 can stop any time, I can stop now.' He 
went on down. He is dead. What slew him? Rum! Rum! Among the 
last things he said was that he could stop any time. He could not stop. 
WHEN THE CHAI3SrS ABE ON. 

"Oh! my young friends, I want to tell you that there is a point in inebria- 
tion beyond which if a man go he can not stop. But sometimes a man will 
be more frank than that. A victim of strong drink said to a reformer, 'It is 
impossible for me to stop, I realize it. If you should tell me I couldn't have 
a drink until to-morrow night unless I had all my fingers cut ofif I would 
say, 'Bring the hatchet and cut them off.' I had a very dear friend in Phila- 
delphia, whose nephew came to him and was talking about his trouble, and 
confessed it. He confessed he could not stop. My friend said, 'You must 
stop.' He said, 'I can't stop. If there stood a cannon, and it were loaded, 
and there was a glass of wine in the mouth of the cannon, and I knew you 
would fire it off if I approached, I would start to get that glass of wine. I 
must have it. I can't get away from it.' Oh! it is awful for a man to wake 
up and feel that he is a captive. I hear him soliloquizing, saying, 'I might 
have stopped three months ago, but I can't stop now. Dead, but not buried. 
I am a walking corpse. I am an apparition of what I once was. I am a 
caged immortal, and my soul beats against the wires of my cage on this side, 
and beats against the wires of my cage on the other side, until there is blood 
on the wires, and blood on the soul, but I can't get out. Destroyed without 
remedy!' 



TALMAGE ON RUM. 



443 



"Again. The man suffers from the loss of his usefulness. Do you know 
some of the men who have fallen into the ditch were once in the front rank 
in churches and in the front rank in reformatory institutions? Do you know 
they once knelt at the family altar, and once carried the chalice of the holy 
communion on sacramental days? Do you know they once stood in the 
pulpit and preached the Gospel of the Son of God? We will not forget the 
scene witnessed four or five years ago in this church when a man rose in 
the midst of the audience, stepped into the aisle, and walked up and down. 
Everybody saw that he was intoxicated. The ushers led him out, and his 
poor wife took his hat and overcoat and followed him to the door. Who was 
he? He had once been a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a sister 
denomination, had often preached in this very city. What slew him? Strong 
drink. Oh! what must be the feeling of a man who has destroyed his capa- 
city for usefulness. Do not be angry with that man. Do not lose your pa- 
tience with him. Do not wonder if he says strange things and gets irritated 
easily in the family. He has the Pyrenees, and the Andes, and the Alps, and 
the Himalayas on him. Do not try to persuade him that there is no future 
punishment. Do not go into any argument to prove to him that there is no 
hell. He knows there is. He is there now! 

TEBBOHS OF THE DAMNED. 

"He suffers also in the loss of physical health. The older people in this 
audience can remember Doctor Sewell going through this country electrify- 
ing great audiences by demonstrating to them the effect of strong drink upon 
the human stomach. I am told that he had eight or ten diagrams which he 
presented to the people, showing the different stages in the process of the 
disease, and I am told tens of thousands of people turned back from that 
ulcerous sketch and swore eternal abstinence from all intoxicants. God only 
knows what the drunkard suffers. Pain files on every nerve, and travels 
every muscle, and gnaws on every bone, and stings with every poison, and 
pulls with every torture. What reptiles crawl over his shivering limbs! 
What spectres stand by his midnight pillow! What groans tear the air! 
Talk of the rack, talk of the funeral-pyre, talk of the Juggernaut! he suffers 



444 



TALMAGE ON RUM, 



them all at once. See the attendants stand back from that ward in the hos- 
pital where the inebriates are dying. They can not stand it. The keepers 
come through to say, 'Hush up now! stop making this noise. Be still! You 
are disturbing all the other patients. Keep still, now!' Then the keepers 
pass on, and after they get past, then the poor creatures wring their hands 
and say, 'O God! Help, Help! Give me rum, give me rum! Take the devils 
off me!' And they shriek, and they blaspheme, and they cry for help, and then 
they ask the keepers to slay them, saying, 'Stab me, strangle me, smother 
me! Help, help! Rum! Give me rum!' They tear out their hair by the 
handful, and they bite their nails into the quick. This is no fancy picture. 
It is transpiring in a hospital at this moment. It went on last night while 
you slept, and more than that, that is the death some of you will die unless 
you stop. I see it coming. God help you to stop before you go so far you 
can not stop." 

Was ever there such a word picture! was ever so much sympathy 
expressed for the drunkard by one who did not drink! Truly here is a great 
prophet who is a great living brother of mankind. He continues: 

MARVELOUS SYMPATHY OF TALMAGE. 

''But it plagues a man also in the loss of his home. I do not care how 
much he loves his wife and children, if this habit gets the mastery of him 
— this habit of strong drink — he will do the most outrageous things. If 
need be, in order to get strong drink, he would sell them all into everlasting 
captivity. There are hundreds and thousands of homes in New York and 
Brooklyn that have been utterly blasted by it. I am speaking of no abstrac- 
tion. Is there anything so disastrous to a man for this life and for the life 
to come? Do you tell me that a man can be happy when he knows he is 
breaking his wife's heart and clothing his children with rags? There are 
little children in the streets to-day, barefooted, unkempt, uncombed, want 
written in every patch of their faded dress, and on every wrinkle of their pre- ' 
maturely-old countenances, who would have been in the house of God this 
morning as well clad as you, had it not been that strong drink drove their 
parents into penury and then down into the grave. Oh, rum! rum! thou 



TALMAGE ON RUM. 



445 



despoiler of homes, thou foe of God, thou recruiting officer of the pit! I 
hate thee! I hate thee! 

"But my subject takes a deeper tone when it tells you that the inebriate 
suffers the loss of the soul. The Bible intimates that if we go into the future 
world unforgiven, the appetites and passions which were regnant here will 
torment us there. I suppose when the inebriate wakes up in the lost world 
there will be an infinite thirst clawing upon him. In this world he could 
get strong drink. However poor he was in this world, he could beg or he 
could steal five cents to get a drink* that would for a little while slake his 
thirst, but in eternity, where will the rum come from? Dives wanted one 
drop of water, but could not get it. Where will the inebriate get the draught 
he so much requires, so much demands? No one to brew it. No one to mix 
it. No one to pour it. No one to fetch it. Millions of worlds now for the 
dregs that were thrown on the sawdusted floor of the restaurant. Millions 
of worlds now for the rind flung out from the punch-bowl of an earthly ban- 
quet. Dives called for water. The inebriate calls for rum. 'Look not upon 
the wine when it is red, when it moveth itself aright in the cup, for at the last 
it biteth like a serpent and it stingeth like an adder!' When I see this plague 
in the land, and when I see this destroying angel sweeping across our great 
cities, I am sometimes indignant and sometimes humiliated. When a man 
asks me, 'What are you in favor of for the subjugation of this evil?' I answer, 
T am ready for anything that is reasonable.' You ask me, 'Are you in favor 
of Sons of Temperance?' Yes. 'Are you in favor of Good Samaritans?' Yes. 
'Are you in favor of Good Templars?' Yes. 'Are you in favor of a prohibi- 
tory law?' Yes. 'Are you in favor of the pledge?' Yes. Combine all the 
influences, O Christian reformers and philanthropists. Combine them all for 
the extirpation e{ this evil." 



CHAPTER XXV. 



TALMAGE OiN THE CHINESE. 

A CHALLENGE TO THE LAW OF EXCLUSION CHRISTIAN NATION HAS NO RIGHT 

TO EXCLUDE ANY HUMAN BEING ESTIMATE OF CHINESE CHARACTER— < 

MISSIONARY WORK AMONG THE MONGOLIANS HAS GOOD RESULTS. 

The breadth of Talmage's humanity, no less than the keenness of his live 
shafts of wit, appears in his sermon preached in Septernber, 1880, soon after 
Dr. Talmage returned from the Pacific Coast. The Chinese question was 
then raging there, and Talmage had unusual opportunities for studying it 
With Christianity as a basis of argument he reaches the conclusion that the 
Chinese also are our brothers, and that they should be received and treated 
as such. If the actual affairs of the world were much- afifected by the Chris- 
tian theory of conduct the course advocated by Talmage would have been 
pursued, and there would have been no Chinese Exclusion Act. 

As a matter of fact, however, the affairs of the world, neither its business 
nor its pleasure, nor its politics, nor the treatment of one race of men by 
another — ^none of these matters are treated according to the principle of unsel- 
fishness, which is the heart and essence of true Christianity. Another and 
older principle is at work in the world of men — ^and that principle is self- 
preservation. It works more visibly in the relation of race to race than it 
works in the relation' of man to man. Whites and blacks in the Southern 
States of America, Americans and Filipinos, Boers and Britons, Russians 
and Finns, do not live under habits of Christian practice — might still makes 
right between the races. Races struggle to overcome each other as they 
have struggled since men dwelt in caves and jungles. Early man drove the 
anthropoid apes out of Asia into the great forests of Africa. The Congress 
of Religions was a step toward uniting mankind in one great brotherhood. 

The Peace Conference at Tbe Hague was consciously a step toward Chris- 

446 



TALMAGE on the CHINESE. 



HI 



tianizing world politics. A great Russian writer affirms that it is the dream 
of the Slav to carry Christ into history — ^meaning thereby the introduction 
of the Christian spirit into the relations of one race, one people, one country 
with all others. That may be the ideal, but even while the great writer an- 
nounces it the bureaucracy of Russia takes measures to stamp out the na- 
tional soul oif Finland. 

"WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?" 

Even as Talmage announces the true Christian attitude toward the Chinese 
in America, the American Government enacts the Chinese Exclusion Act. 
"The light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.'' 

"Who is my neighbor?" cries Talmage. "A keen lawyer had Christ 
under the fire of cross-examination, and this was one of the questions. The 
answer which Christ gave enlarged the world's idea of neighborhood, and 
that idea of neighborhood has ever since been enlarging. It seemed a figure 
of speech to say that people living on the other side of the world were our 
neighbors, but steam from Southampton to New York, and from China to 
San Francisco, and rail tracks across all the continents, and cables under all 
the seas, have literally made the whole world one neighborhood. Is the 
Chinaman a neighbor? Does he belong to the race of which God is the 
Father ? Is he a brute, or an immortal ? Will he help us, or will he hurt us ? 
Must he be welcomed or driven back? Those are tremendous questions which 
press upon the nation today, and answer them we must, and answer them 
we will. The subject will yet be as much of an agitation on the Atlantic 
Coast as it is on the Pacific Coast. 

*T want you, my friends, to start right in your opinions, and therefore 
I shall give you the result of my summer observation in California, where 
the Chinese populations have become an important factor. Arriving in San 
Francisco Saturday afternoon, August 7th, I had been but a few moments 
in my hotel when the highest officers of the city called upon me in the in- 
terest of the anti-Chinese sentiment, and fromi morning until night, and for 
many days, I do not think there was half an hour in which I was not brought 
into the presence of this subject by committee or letter or document, so that 



448 



TALMAGE ON THE CHINESE. 



if any man ever had a good opportunity of seeing the whole subject from 
both sides I had that opportunity. It is the habit in San Francisco to take 
people from the East to see the Chinese quarters, or what they call China- 
town. The newspapers say President Hayes last week visited Chinatown, 
but that they covered up the worst parts of the place that he might be de- 
ceived in regard to the true character of Chinatown. No such imposition 
was practiced upon me, for the five gentlemen with whom I went there were 
openly and above-board always antagonistic to Chinese emigration, and it 
was their one desire to have me see the worst side of it. Doctor Mears, a 
most obliging gentleman, the President of the Board of Health of San Fran- 
cisco, went with me, and if there is a man on the continent antagonistic to 
Chinese emigration it is Dr. Mears. So I saw the worst, and it is bad 
enough and filthy enough and dreadful enough, but I tell you, as I told the 
people of San Franciscoi in their Grand O^era House, that underground New 
York life is filthy fifty per cent worse than Chinatown. The white iniquity 
of our Atlantic Coast cities is .more brazen than the yellow iniquity of San 
Francisco, and as to malodors, it is the difference between the malodors of 
whiskey and the malodors of opium, and the malodors of whiskey are to me 
a thousandfold more offensive than the malodors of opium. The crowded 
tenement houses of New York are more crowded and more abominable than 
the crowded Chinese quarters. I told the people of San Francisco, standing 
face to face : Tf you will let your three hundred policemen be augmented by 
five hundred special policemen sworn in foir the duty, men from your bank- 
ing houses and your churches— if they will go out in the name of God and the 
strength of the law, they will in ome night extirpate the last iniquity of China- 
town.' Do you tell me that two hundred and eighty thousand good San 
Franciscans cannot put down twenty thousand bad people? 

CHmESE VIRTUES. 

"From what I saw this summer in San Francisco, and from my observa- 
tion in California ten years ago, I give it to you as my opinion, corroborated 
by the opinion of tens of thousands of people in California, that, of all the 
foreign populations which have come to the United States during the last 



TALMAGE ON THE CHINESE. 



449 



forty years, none are more industrious, more sober, more harmless, more 
honest, more genial, more courteous, more obliging than the Chinese. I 
have in my possession affidavits from all classes of people in California, in 
which they present the truthfulness, the integrity, the love of order, the indus- 
try of the Chinese people. They have no equal as laundrymen; they are 
unrivaled as house-help. I was told in many of the homes of San Francisco 
that one Chinese servant will do the work of three servants of any other kind. 

"It is objected to the Chinese that they underbid other labor, since they can 
live so much cheaper than other nationalities, and so they injure American 
labor and every other style of labor. I reply to that, in many departments 
the Qiinese receive higher wages than any other class of persons. There 
are no such wages paid in Brooklyn or New York for domestic service as 
are paid to the Chinese in San Francisco to-day. Besides that, suppose they 
did underbid other labor, would you cast them out on that account? Then, 
to be consistent, you must drive out all those who work sewing machines 
and reapers and hay rakes, because these different styles of machinery are 
underbidding other styles of work and injuring those who toil with the bare 
hand. As to this absurd notion that is going through the country about th€ 
Chinese injuring American labor, I have to tell you this fact, that wages 
are higher in California — have been higher in California — than in any other 
State of the American Union. When we shall have in this cluster of cities, 
as we will have, twenty or thirty or forty thousand Chinese workmen, wages 
will be larger than they are now, and we will have greater prosperity, for 
then, instead of between one and two millions in this cluster of cities, we shall 
have three or four or five millions. 

FINANCIAL ARGUMENT. 

"Again, it is objected to the Chinese that they do not spend all their 
money where they make it, but send it all back to China. False again. The 
Chinese pay in the city of San Francisco rent for residences and for wash- 
houses and so on, yearly, $2,400,000. Would not we people in Brooklyn 
think that it was a grand addition to our municipal condition if we had 
$2,400,000 added every year? Further, as taxes to the State government the 



450 



TALMAGE ON THE CHINESE, 



Chinese in California pay over $4,000,000 a year. It all stays in California. 
Moreover, they pay in customs to the United States Government annually 
$9,400,000. That all stays in this country. Now, away with the falsehood 
that the Chinese spend none of their money in this country. Besides that, 
if they did send it all away, could you blame them much? How much 
money would yom invest in a country where you were denied the rights of 
citizenship and where you might any hour suffer outrage and expatriation? 
The Chinese are blamed because they demand that after death their bones 
be sent home to China. If you and I were as badly treated in Brooklyn as 
the Chinese have been treated in San Francisco, we would not want to be 
buried within three thousand miles of where the indignity had been enacted. 
We would argue : If they treat us so badly while we have our arms to strike 
back, how will they treat us when we are powerless?' 

''Besides that, it comes very poorly from us, the charge that the Chinese 
send home their money. There are hundreds and thousands of American 
and English merchants in China; where do they send their money to? Be- 
sides that, we have been applauding and complimenting for the last thirty 
years the German and Irish serving-maids who have been denying them- 
selves all luxuries and sending their money back to the old folks at home. 
Oh, we have admired that self-denial and that generosity, and we have had 
no words to express that admiration for their willingness to send their money 
to Germany and Ireland, and I think what is good for one nation is good for 
another. Besides that, O' men of the Alantic Coast, do you know in what 
direction and for what purpose much of the money goes that is sent back to 
China? The parents of many of these Chinese in America are serfs, the 
subjects of a base feudal system, and much of the money that is sent back to 
China is for the liberation of their parents. I have that from a mandarin 
high in authority. If your parents were in bondage, would not you send some 
money home to purchase their liberation? Would not you send all you 
have? Instead of caricaturing the Chinese for sending their money back to 
China, let us admire their self-denial — for they love luxuries as much as we 
do — let us applaud their self-denial. 



TALMAGE ON THE CHINESE. 



451 



"But it is said that they have such severe economies. Well, that is bad ! 
That is a crime you cannot charge much upon the American people! The 
fact is, these people come in with a lower order of civilization, and they are 
industrious, and they pay all their debts and save something for a rainy day, 
and such a style of civilization we cannot abide in this country ! We do not 
want our higher style of civilization interfered with — that style which allows 
a man to spend four times more money than he makes, and to steal the rest ! 
Away with this barbarism, which works all the time and pays all its debts! 
PLEA rOR RELIGIOUS TOLERATION. 

"Again, it is objected that the Chinese are pagans, and that they have 
peculiar dress. What, now, do you refer to — the Chinese cue? George 
Washington wore a cue, Benjamin Franklin wore a cue, John Hancock wore 
a cue, your great grandfathers wore cues, and anything that Washington 
and Franklin and John Hancock and your ancestry did must have been emi- 
nently respectable. Besides that, Chinese apparel is often more than eclipsed 
by American apparel. Have you forgotten crinoline monstrosities of twenty 
years ago? The coal-scuttle bonnet of your grandmothers, the silver knee- 
buckles of your grandfathers, and how at different times in this country there 
has been an elaboration and an overtopping and appalling mystery of womanly 
head attire that ought to make us lenient in our criticism of Mongolian con- 
spicuities? We see in this (for their dress is part of their religion) and in 
other things, that a man's religious belief is to be interfered with. Do you 
think the Huguenots and the Pilgrim Fathers and the patriots of the Revolu- 
tion would have contended as they did for civil and religious liberty in this 
country if they had known that their descendants would make religious belief 
a test of residence and citizenship? If this Government continues to stand 
it will be because alike defended are the joss-houses of the Chinese, the 
cathedrals of the Roman Catholics, the meeting-houses of the Quakers, and 
the churches of the Presbyterians." 

The breadth of Talmage's mind is clearly revealed in many passages, 
but nowhere more clearly than here. Here is the generous spirit which 
made the Congress of Religions possible. The next paragraph, in its fear- 
lessness and fervor, reminds one of Wordsworth's great sonnet : 



452 



TALMAGE ON THE CHINESE. 



"Great God, I'd rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn." 

"Do you want me to make a choice between a religion which insults and 
stones a man because of the color of his skin or the length of his hair or the 
economy of his habits, on the one hand, and a paganism which patiently en- 
dures all this, working right on until death comes? If you want toi have me 
make a choice between such a religion and such a paganism, I say, 'Give me 
paganism.' If you have a superior civilization, a superior Christianity, pre- 
sent them to these people in a courteous and Christian way. And this brings 
me to say that the first Sabbath forenoon I spent in a Chinese church in San 
Francisco, and I had the privilege, through an interpreter, of telling those 
Mongolians of that Christ who was not an American Christ, nor a German 
Christ, nor an Italian Christ, nor a Spanish Christ, but the round world's 
Christ, and I think it was the greatest joy of the summer to me that I heard 
afterward that through the services salvation was brought to some of their 
souls. 

CHINESE MAKE GRAND CHEISTIANS. 

"These Chinese make grand Christians, and there are going to be more 
of them — ^five hundred millions of them — ^if the Bible be true when it says 
that the land of Sinim is to surrender to God. Oh, how insignificant and con- 
temptible will seem many of the Christians of this generation when in the 
future it shall be demonstrated that these Chinese were brought to our coun- 
try, not so much by the stigmatized Six Emigration Companies, but by the 
God of the Bible, to have them Christianized, and multitudes of them sent 
home again for the redemption of China. Now, my friends, they are either 
inferior, or they are our equals, or they are our superiors. If they are our 
inferiors, flat skulls will never dominate high foreheads, stupidity will never 
overcome large brain. If they are inferior, you have nothing to dread. If 
they are your equals, does not your sense of justice say then they ought to 
have equal rights? If they are our superiors, then we cannot afford to mal- 
treat them. 

POETIC RICHES OF _ CHIN A. 

"China is the richest country in all the earth. Oh, the ruby, and the 
amethyst, and the porphyry, and the agate, and the lapis lazuli, and the tur- 



^ TALMAGB ON THE CHINESE. 453 

quoise, and the emerald, and the crystal — enough precious stones to build the 
four walls of Heaven! O'h, the gold, and the silver, and the iron, and the 
lead, and the copper waiting for the cellar door of her mountains to be thrown 
open ! Oh, the rosewood, and the camphor, and the cedar, and the cypress, 
and the varnish trees, and the ebony, and the ivory — enough to make the 
cabinet-ware of all nations. Oh, the wheat, and the barley, and the mango, 
and the pineapple, and the persimmon, and the cocoanut and the rice — enough 
to make puddings for all the earth, and tea enough to refresh all nations! 
You stupid man, do you not understand that their right to come here implies 
our right to go there? It will not be many years before there will be as 
many Americans in China as there are Chinese in America, and the question 
all over China will be, 'Must the Americans go?' " In the light of the siege 
of the legations at Pekin the words of Talmage become luminous as prophecy 
fulfilled. 

"If," he continues, "when a man must go in an emigrant wagon six 
months to cross to the Pacific Coast, many went, do you not think New York- 
ers and Long Islanders will go to China when they can go there in five weeks, 
when they are fully persuaded of all the -treasures of that great land ? It 
is the will of Providence that the whole world should be on wheels, and the 
nations are going to move north, move south, move east, and move west. 
The nations will intermarry, and far down in the future men will have the 
blood of fifty nationalities in their arteries, and there will be in all the earth 
only one great nation — one nation on five continents — a grand, homogeneous, 
great-hearted, all-climated, five-zoned, world-encircling, Christian nation. 
They broke to pieces at the foot of Babel, they will come together at the foot 
of the cross. Under the shadow of the one they were confounded, under the 
light of the other they will be harmonized, and when all nations and kingdoms 
and people become one empire, can you doubt who will be king? 'Hallelujah! 
for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.' 

NO CHINESE WALL. 

"Do not in your nervousness try to build up a high, stout wall to keep the 
Chinese out while you let others in. Such a wall as that, God's earthquakes 



454 



T ALU AGE ON THE CHINESE., 



would shake from beneath, and God's thunderbolts of wrath would smite from 
above, and that wall would heave and rock and fall on the demagogues who 
built it, and on the nation who favors it, and on the Christianity that is too 
cowardly to denounce it. God will say. That American temple I built for 
civil and religious liberty, and for a gospel that would have all men saved, I 
founded that temple in the blood of the Revolutionary fathers. The arches of 
that temple went up on the shoulders of men who died for their principles, the 
baptismal fonts of that temple were filled with the tears of exiled nations who 
came here for refuge, the sword of your patriot ancestry was the trowel that 
mortared the foundation, and lo ! on these sacred altars you have sacrificed the 
swine of passion and hate, and these columns have been defiled with unholy 
hands, now let the temple perish. Down it must come — column and capital, 
arch and dome — and I will in some other land, and among a more generous 
people, and in a brighter age of the world, demonstrate before earth and heaven 
how that I would have all men equal and free !' " 

The fervent passage in which Talmage prophesies the ''one Christian 
nation," embracing two hemispheres and five continents, contains a most in- 
spiring vision of universal human brotherhood — an end furthered, since the 
sermon was preached, by the Congress of Religions and the Peace Conference. 
The Congress, indeed, seems to indicate that rather than attempting to sup- 
plant Buddhism, Confucianism, Mohammedanism and the other great religions 
of the world, the enlightened Christianity of the future will welcome these as 
brothers, and joining hands and hearts with them will affiliate with but not 
absorb them or by them be absorbed. The same spirit of toleration for the 
Chinese people which Talmage here preaches will, when carried further, bring 
toleration also for the Chinese religions. 

SELFISHNESS VS. LOVE. 

It is a great spectacle — this conflict between the self-interest of Californians 
on the one hand and on the other the principle of altruism preached by Tal- 
mage. Self interest won in this case and the Chihese were excluded. There 
is a similar conflict between the inspired voice of Russia proclaiming the 
Slavic race ideal and mission to be the bringing of Christ into history, and 
on the other hand the quenching of Finnish national life by the Russian power. 



TALMAGE ON THE CHINESE. 



455 



The conflict is in the last analysis the conflict between the ancient principle 
of life which Darwin saw and expressed calling it the law of the survival of 
the fittest, and showing that all living beings are engaged in a ceaseless strug- 
gle for existence, and on the other hand the law, '^Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself." As the law of strife, of self-preservation, of destruction of others, 
is ages older than Darwin, the law of love is ages older than Christ. It began 
in the love of animal mothers for their young, and from that beginning went 
on developing and spreading until the great mind of Jesus of Nazareth per- 
ceived in it a force which would transform and save mankind. He first clearly 
enunciated the second of the twin laws which weave the world. Selfishness is 
necessary. Without it no being could live. Love is necessary. Without it it 
would not be worth while for any being to live. 

Beyond all shattering of ancient theologies past all passing of old-time 
creeds, the name and the philosophy of Jesus Christ will endure, for with Him 
there came into the world of man a clear conception, born in his deep heart, 
of the all-important place which Love must:play in human life. 

This sermon of Talmage is one only of countless echoes of the sermon on 
the mount still sounding in the world to-day. Deeper than all forms, and 
rituals, and insignificances, and disputes, and sects, this sermon is one in 
spirit with the first Christian sermon. The principle of life enunciated by 
Christ really compels the admission of Chinamen into our nation. But that 
older principle of life which graves deep and firm in each man's and nation's 
soul the iron mandate, "Preserve thyself," compels the exclusion of the 
Chinese. Shall the Californian of the future be white or yellow ? The soul of 
the white race hurls its tremendous force into the spoken and acted answer, 
''He shall be whiteT 

The philosopher does not condemn that act of racial self-preservation. He 
notes with calm eye that in this particular time and place the non-Christian 
spirit has prevailed. He does not condemn the non-Christian spirit. He 
knows that the law, "Preserve thyself," is coeval with the law, "Love thy 
neighbor." He knows that both these two world- forces are necessary, that in 
their counter-play is the same delicate balance as the balance of centripetal and 
centrifugal forces which keep the earth in its orbit. 



/ 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 

LIFE ITSELF THE CHIEF SOURCE OF HIS CULTURE — STUDENT OF THE FINE 

ARTS TALMAGE ON TURNER THOMAS WEBSTER, PAINTER OF BOYS 

ROSA BONHEUR's HAYFIELD — ^FIG LEAVES — THE CULTURE OF TRAVEL — 
DESCRIPTION OF THE CHAMPS ELYSEES. 

Writers like the editor of the Nation, whose criticism of Talmage we have 
touched on elsewhere, have such a plentiful ignorance of what the man's 
mind really was that they will be startled at the present chapter-heading. 
"The Culture of Talmage!" they will cry, and look for a chapter like that 
entitled "The Snakes of Ireland," which consisted of the words — "There 
are no snakes in Ireland." But there is a "Culture of Talmage." The 
critics of the class we speak of are accustomed to conceive the voice of Tal- 
mage, reaching his twenty million readers a week by means of that printing 
press whose cylinder he proposed to convert into "a wheel of the Lord's 
chariot" — they conceive his voice to be what Walt Whitman said his own 
was. "I send my barbaric yawp across the roofs of the world," boasts 
Whitman. Critics have thought that Talmage, too, had a "barbaric yawp." 
They have not read the man's works. 

In the first place, Talmage was a university graduate, and in all the 

technique of rhetoric which enslaves the average critic he was a better trained 

critic himself. Better trained was he to the point of concealing his training. 

We have alluded in the chapter on the Holy Land to his sympathy with the 

classic writers and his non-parade of such sympathy in words directed to 

people who were not classical scholars. We have pointed out the superb 

structure of his sermons with their lowly openings and lofty perorations. 

There remains to be shown here his study of those conventional vehicles of 

culture — painting and polite travel. 

The chief source of Talmage's culture was indubitably life itself. All 

456 



THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 



457 



his boyhood life contributed material for culture. So in his study of pic- 
tures, it is not the technique, not the art for art's sake which appeals most 
to him, but the human element — the story, the pathos, the fun which paint- 
ers have put on canvas. His is not the ultra-cultivated, decadent point of 
view, but it is the point of view of a man whom painters, to be truly great, 
must please. 

It would be absurd to claim for Talmage any profoundly studied art- 
criticism. Nevertheless, his opinions are worth far more than those absorb- 
ers of Ruskin, Taine and Pater, who merely ape and echo the opinions of 
their oracles. A quick eye, a quick sympathy, common sense and an honest 
voice make a man's judgment of pictures hum.anly valuable and these Tal- 
mage had. How much he liked pictures, how he looked at them with his 
own eyes, and how much he saw is evident from the following passages: 

"In art, as in everything else, things must pass for what they are worth. 
A feeble picture of Orcagna is none the less feeble because five hundred 
years old. I can not admire his 'Coronation of the Virgin,' wherein he sets 
the angels to playing bagpipes. Even the Scotch Highlander expects to 
put down his squealing instrument this side of heaven. There is no power in 
the centuries to consecrate a failure. Time has a scythe, but no trowel. 
Age, in the abstract, excites not my veneration. I must first know whether 
it is an old saint or an old sinner. The worst characteristic about some 
things is their longevity. A newly-laid egg, boiled just two minutes and a 
half by the watch, and placed on the table beside a clean napkin, is a luxury 
to bless the palate withal, but some of us remember that once in our board- 
ing-house at school, we chanced at the morning meal to crack the shell of 
a Pre-Raphaelite egg, and, without 'returning thanks,' precipitately forsook 
the table. Antiquity may be bad or good. 

''As with physical vision, so in mental optics there are far-sighted men 
who can not see things close by, while a quarter of a mile away they can 
tell the time of day from the dial on a church steeple. The sulphurous smell 
in Church's 'Cotopaxi' makes them cough and sneeze, though, at the peril 
of unhinging their necks from the spinal column, they will stand for hours, 
looking straight up at a homely Madonna by some ancient Italian, plastered 



458 



THE. CULTURE OF.. TALMAGE, 



on the rotunda of a Brussels cathedral. Having no sympathy with those 
who expend so much good-humor on the old masters that they have noth- 
ing left for moderns, I shall speak of recent pictures, at the risk of rubbing 
against fresh paint. 

AMEHICAIT INTEREST IN TURNER. 

"Americans, more than any other people, want to see the paintings of 
Joseph William Turner. John Ruskin has devoted more than half of his 
working life making that painter more famous. But Ruskin's art criticisms 
have nowhere been read as in the United States, for the reason that The 
Modern Painters is published in a very cheap American edition, while the 
Enghsh publishers of that book present it only in expensive type and with 
costly illustrations, thus keeping it beyond the reach of the masses. Though 
Turner lies beside Joshua Reynolds in the Cathedral of St. Paul, and his 
pictures have become the inheritance of the British nation, London knows 
little more of him than does New York. 

"But nine out of ten of our friends returning from the National Gallery 
of England express sore disappointment with Turner's paintings. They 
think it strange that his canvas should excite the great intellect of John 
Ruskin for fifteen years into a seeming frenzy of admiration, so that he can 
write or speak of nothing else — enduring, in behalf of his favorite artist, 
all acerbity and flagellation, the masters of British and foreign schools be- 
daubing the brilliant writer with such surplus of paint as they could spare 
from their own palettes, and pursuing the twain with such ferocity, that, 
though the first has hidden from his foes behind the marble of the tomb, 
and his defender, in ruined health, retired to Denmark Hill, nevertheless 
the curses need some cooling yet. 

"Our first glance at these pictures, covering the four walls of two rooms 
in the gallery, struck us back with violent disappointment. On our last 
look, on the last day of our visit, we felt an overcoming sadness that probably 
we never again should find such supernatural power in an artist. We say 
supernatural, for if we believe that Jeremiah and David and John had more 
than human power to write, I know not why it would be wrong to suppose 



THE CULTURE. OF. TALMAGE. 



459 



that Paul Veronese, and Giotto, and Rembrandt, and West, and William 
Turner were divinely inspired to paint. In the one case, it was parchment, 
in the other, canvas. Here it was ink, there it was colors. Now a pen, then 
a pencil. Was it not the same power which handed Raphael's Transfigura- 
tion' across four centuries that has conveyed to this present time the New 
Testament? I never felt so deeply the suffering of the Savior, when reading 
the description in Luke and John, as when standing in the cathedral at Ant- 
werp. Looking at the 'Crucifixion,' by Rubens, I was beaten down and 
crushed in soul, and, able to look no more, I staggered out, faint and sick, 
and exhausted, the sweat dropping from every pore. 

"I will not advocate the supernal inspiration of any of these men, ancient 
or modern, but must say that the paintings of WilHam Turner exerted 
over me an influence different from anything I have experienced. The 
change between my first and last look of this British artist is to be explained 
by the change of standpoint. No paintings in the world are so dependent 
upon the position occupied by the spectator. Gazed at from ordinary dis- 
tances, they are insipid, meaningless, exaggerated. You feel as if they had 
not been done with a pencil, but a broom. It seems that each one of them 
must have taken two quarts of stuff to make it as thick as that. You 
almost expect the colors to drip off — you feel like taking your handkerchief 
and sopping up the excess. But, standing close up to the opposite wall, you 
see a marked improvement, yet, even then, the space between you and 
the picture is too small. You need to pass through into the next room., 
and then, looking through the doorway, fasten your eye on the painting. 
Six paces off, and Turner's 'Decline of Carthage' is a vexation, but twenty- 
two paces off, with an eye-glass, and Turner's 'Decline of Carthage' is a 
rapture. From the last standpoint, looking at The Spithead,' we felt like 
dividing our life into two portions — that which had occurred before we 
saw Turner and that which might occur afterward. 

TUBNER'S CHANGES OF STYLE. 

"This master shifted his style four times. No one mood lasted him long. 
So many a man looks back, and finds that his life has been a series of fits. 



460 



THE CULTURE OF TALMACE, 



Perhaps very young in literature, he had a fit Tupperian. Passing on a few 
years, and he was taken with a fit Byronian. Getting into calmer waters of 
life, he was attacked with a fit metaphysical. As might be expected, from 
being out so much in the fog he took a violent fit Carlylean. Then, at the 
close of life, he reviewed his intellectual gyrations, and, disgusted with his 
ramblings, he had a fit of common sense, which was such a sudden change 
from anything preceding that it killed him. It is easy to trace Turner 
through a variety of artistic spasms, but he is always entertaining. 

"We can not forget his 'Caligula's Palace,' the magnificence of destruc- 
tion, the ages of the past looking through the ruined porticos and shivering 
on the top of the broken marble, the bridge, in its leap across the bay, struck 
with a death of desolation that leaves it a skeleton in the way, children play- 
ing in the foreground, their diminutiveness and simplicity, by the contrast, 
piHng up the height of the towers, and the gorgeous pretension of the im- 
perial domain, the sun rising just high enough to show that carved pillars 
of stone belonging to a kingly fool are but dust when the 'Rock of Ages' 
crashes against them. 

THE LIGHT OF TURNER. 

"Who can forget the Hght that Turner pours on Venice, the Carhpanile 
of San Marco, the Dogana — light falling with the positiveness of a pebble, 
but the difTusiveness of a liquid — light that does not strike on the water and 
stop there, but becomes transfused and intermixed — nay, which, by match- 
less chemistry of color, becomes a part of the wave, so that you cannot say 
which is light and which is water, gondolas variegated, dropping all their 
hues into the wave — gondola above, gondola beneath, and moving keel to 
keel. Light, though so subtle that it flies from other touch. Turner picked 
up, nor let it slip through his fingers till it touched the canvas. John Martin, 
the Northumberland painter, tried to catch the Hght, but instead thereof 
caught the fire that burns up many of his fine pictures. Turner's light is 
neither a hot element to consume nor a lifeless thing that might be called 
a mere pallor on the cheek of the darkness, but so natural you hardly know 
whether it drops from the sky-window into the gallery, or was kindled by 



THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 



461 



the hand which for twenty years has been mouldering in the crypt of Saint 
Pauls Cathedral. 

WATER AND PEHSPECTIVE. 

"What water Turner painted! The waves of the sea knew him. No 
man could pour such moonlight upon the Thames as he, or could so well run 
the hands of the sea up and down the sides of a stranded ship, or could so 
sadden the Hellespont with the farewell of Leander, or toss up the water 
in a squall so natural that you know the man in the fishing-smack must 
be surprised at the suddenness, or so infuriate the Channel at Calais that 
you wish you did not, on your way home, have to cross it, or could have 
dropped a castle-shadow so softly and yet so deep into a stream. The wave 
of William Turner was not, as in many pictures, merely wet whitewash, 
but a mingling of brightness and gloom, crystal and azure, smoothed down 
as a calm morning tramples it, or flung up just as the winds do it. 

'Then, all this thrown into a perspective so marked, that, seeing it for 
the first time, you feel that you never before knew what perspective was. 
You can hardly believe that the scene he sketches is on the dead level of the 
wall. You get on the bank of his river in Trince's Holiday,' and follow 
it back through its windings, miles away, and after you think you will be 
compelled to stop, you see it still beyond, and when you can no more keep 
the bank, you see in still greater distance what you say may be cloud, and 
may be water, but you cannot decide. Turner can put more miles within a 
square foot than any one we know of. There are always back-doors opening 
beyond. But his foreshortening is quite as rare. Often his fishermen and 
warriors and kings are not between the frame of tho picture, but between 
you and the canvas. You almost feel their breath on your cheek, and stand 
back to give them room to angle, or fight, or die. 

''After exploring miles of pictures, the two on secular themes that hang 
in my memory, higher than all, brighter than all, are Turner's 'Parting of 
Hero and Leander/ and Turner's 'Palace and Bridge of Caligula.' And 
there they will hang forever. 

"Yet his rivals and enemies hounded him to death. Unable longer to 



462 



THE CULTURE, OF TALMAGE. 



endure the face of a public which had so grievously maltreated him, with a 
broken heart he went out from his elegant parlors on Queen Anne street, 
to die in a mean house in Chelsea. After he was lifeless, the world gathered 
up his body, played a grand march over it, and gave it honored sepulture. 
Why did they not do justice to him while living? What are monuments 
worth to a dead man? Why give stones when they asked for bread? Why 
crack and crush the jewel, and then be so very careful about the casket? 
Away with this oft-repeated graveyard farce! Do not twist into wreaths 
for the tomb the flowers with which you ought to have crowned the heated 
brow of a living painter." Talmage is not echoing Ruskin, but his descrip- 
tions of Turner's light and water effects are hardly surpassed by Ruskin 
himself. 

THE HUMAN" SIDE OF IT. 

More realistic descriptions of other pictures abound in the works of 
Talmage — the estimate being ever not the dilettante's, but the man's. He 
says that "one of the aggravations of a traveler's life is the being compelled 
to give but four days to a gallery that demands as many years. As we 
hasten through, we feel the fingers of worn artists pulling us back, as much 
as to say, 'Is this the way you look at what it took years of privation and 
toil to do?' Rembrandt says, 'You did not see that wrinkle in the old man's 
face. It took me weary hours to sink that!' Muller says, 'You did not 
notice the twist of straw in that upturned chair!' Delacroix wonders that 
we pass his river Styx without a tear over the distressed boatman. Guerin 
upbraids us for slighting that drapery which he was a month in hanging. 
Yet we break away and push on, in a few hours of time passing through 
a seeming eternity of painstaking. 

"But, as after days of walking through strange cities, there are only five 
or six faces among the multitudes that you remember, so we recall only a 
few of the thousands of pictures along which we have passed. 

THOOVCAS WEBSTElEI'S BOYS. 

"To this painter there was given a revelation of boys. Between six 
^nd fourteen years of age the masculine nature is a mixture of mischief, and 



THE CULTURE^ OF TALMAGE. 



463 



sensitiveness, and spunk, and fun, and trouble, and pugnacity, that the 
chemistry of the world fails to analyze. A little girl is definable. She laughs 
when she is pleased, cries when she feels badly, pouts when she is cross, and 
eats when she is hungry. Not so with a boy. He would rather go a-nutting 
than to eat, forgets at the fish-pond he has not had his dinner, often laughs 
when he feels badly, and looks submissive to an imposition practised upon 
him till he gets the perpetrator alone in the middle of the road, and tumbles 
him into the dirt till eyes and mouth and nose are so full the fellow imagines 
that, before his time, he has returned to dust. A boy, under a calm exterior, 
may have twenty emotions struggling for ascendency. 

"After a boy has been tamed by hard discipline, and wears a stock, and 
has learned to walk down street without any temptation to 'skip-skop,' and 
sees only nonsense in leap-frog, and enjoys Calvin's Institutes above Robin- 
son Crusoe, and feels feathers on the elbows — premonitory symptoms of 
cherub, he ceases to be a mystery. But Thomas Webster, in *The Dame 
School' in Kensington Museum, London, gives us the unperfected boy such 
as we more frequently see him, namely, boy in the raw. This creature is 
somewhat rough, and uncertain as to where he will break out, superlatively 
susceptible to tickle, is bound to lose his hat, and comes in red in the face 
from just having swallowed his slate-pencil. 

THE SCHOOLaVEISTIlESS. 

"Thomas Webster, in this picture, manages girls and boys perfectly. 
There he places the spectacled old schoolmistress. I remember her per- 
fectly well, although I have not seen her since I was eight years old, and 
yet I would have known her anywhere by her nose. Fifty hot summers 
have dried up all the juices of her nature. Her countenance is full of whack 
and thump, and the gad she holds in her hand is as thick at one end as the 
other, not moderating into any mercy of thinness. It would never be mis- 
taken for the rod that budded. Boys studying 'Rule of Three' look around 
at her to study rule of one, and, in multiplying the sum of school troubles, 
carry nine when they ought to carry nothing. How sharp her eyes are! 
The boys sitting on the opposite side of the room feel her look on their 
back clear through the fustian. 



464 



THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 



"There is the cracked and peeling wall. There are the hats, and bon- 
nets, and satchels. There is a little girl threading a needle. She will have to 
twist tighter the end of the thread or she will never get it through that 
fine head. She will soon be able to hem handkerchiefs, and to take stitches 
for her mother. May she never never have to sew for a living, sorrow and 
anguish and despair bigger than a camel going through the eye of her 
needle! Here is a boy prompting another in the recitation, telling him 
wrong, I am certain. There always was some fellow to get us into trouble 
with geography, grammar, or arithmetic lesson, telling us that the capital of 
Virginia is Texas, and that baboon is a personal pronoun, and that in every 
whole there are three halves and six quarters. 

''There is a little girl crying over her lesson. Why cannot somebody 
show her? Napoleon getting his ammunition wagons over the Saint Ber- 
nard pass had nothing to do compared with the tug of a little child making 
her first trial at spelling 'baker.' The alphabet to many has been twenty-six 
tortures. Here stands a little girl with her finger in her mouth. The 
schoolmistress has not seen it, or she would put an end even to that small 
consolation. School is no place for a bee to suck honey out of a flower. A 
boy is looking through a sheet of paper, which he has rolled into a scroll 
like a telescope — he is probably an astronomer in the early stages. 

comprehensiolN" of boy-nature. 

"Here is a plodding boy, prying away at his books. He suffers many 
impositions from his comrades. Away! you young scamps with those sticks 
with which you are annoying him! When a joke is told, and the children 
laugh, he will turn around with a bashful and bewildered look, imagining 
himself the victim of the satire, but next day will cackle Ojut in the quiet of 
school-time at the sudden discovery of the meaning of the witticism. But he 
may yet outstrip them all. When a boy's head is so thick it is hard for 
knowledge to get in, the same thickness prohibits its departure. Give him 
thirty years, and he will make a dictionary. 

"There a boy makes faces, and the whole school is in danger of running 
over with giggle. It is an awful thing for a child not to dare to laugh when 



THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 



465 



the merriment rises, and wells up till the jacket gets tight, and the body 
is a ball of fun, and he knows that if out of the corners of his compressed 
lips a snicker should escape, all the boys would go ofif in explosion. I re- 
member times when I had at school such responsibility of repression resting 
on me, and proved unfaithful. 

"There! to severely correct them, a boy and girl are placed beside each 
other — a style of punishment greater at that age than ever after. Here is 
a boy making way with an apple behind his lifted book. I expect some 
one will cry out, ']o\\x]. Greed is eating an apple!' for it is a peculiarity of 
children under ten years of age (?) that they do not .like others to have that 
which they themselves can not get. Whether it be right or wrong, in their 
estimation, depends on whether themselves or someone else has the apple. 

'7^st outside the school-room door is a boy showing his strength. As 
he turns up his arm in the light, he says, through the art of the painter, 'Do 
you see that muscle?' He is good at a wrestle, can run around all the bases 
at one stroke of the bat, can take the part of a wronged urchin, and I fear, 
if the school-dame comes'too suddenly at him with the stick, she may lose 
the glass out of her spectacles. There will be no Sunday-school books made 
about him, although out of his brawn of body, and mind, and soul, there 
may yet come an Oliver Cromwell or a Martin Luther. 

"Thank Thomas Webster for taking us back to school by his painting! 
It is the only way we should like to go back. We had rather be almost 
anything than a boy, the world so little understands him. 

ROSA BONHEUB. 

"The next best thing to being in the country is to have Rosa Bonheur, 
in a picture gallery, plunge us into a hay field. The stroke of a reaper's 
rifle on the scythe is to me a reveille. The past comes back, and in a mo- 
ment I am a boy, with a basket of luncheon, on the way to the men in the 
harvest field, finding them asleep under the trees, taking their 'nooning.' 
Their appetites were sharper than their whetted scythes. Those men are 
still taking their nooning under the trees, but it is a sounder sleep. Death 
has plowed for them the deep furrow of a grave. 

"I forgive Rosa Bonheur that she smokes cigarettes, and wears a rowdy 



466 



THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 



hat, and is fond of lounging about slaughter-houses, now, as I stand before 
this picture of the hay scene. Like the bewitched workman who looked 
into the maiden's face, we forget it is showery weather, until it is four 
o'clock, and the guard of the gallery, with cocked hat, and red sash, and 
flaming sword, comes round to drive us out of Paradise." For the sake of 
his true interpretation of the boy and animal pictures — shall they be classed 
together? — we forgive the good Doctor his bit of professional prudery in 
wishing for more fig leaves. 

Writers whose whole stock-in-trade is ''culture" cannot improve on the 
description of places Parisian which Talmage makes in these paragraphs: 
'The scarlet rose of battle is in full bloom. The white water lily of fear 
trembles on the river of tears. The cannon hath retched fire and its lips 
have foamed blood. The pale horse of death stands drinking out of the 
Rhine, its four hoofs on the breast-bone of men who sleep their last sleep. 
The red clusters of human hearts are crushed in the wine-press just as the 
vineyards of Moselle and Hockheimer are ripening. Chassepot and mitrail- 
leuse have answered the needle-gun, and there is all along the lines the 
silence of those who will never speak again. 

"But Paris has for an interval, at least, recovered from her recent depres- 
sion. Yesterday I stood at the foot of the Egyptian red-granite obelisk, 
dug out three thousand four hundred years ago, and from the top of which, 
at an elevation of seventy-two feet, the ages of the past look down upon 
the splendors of the present. On either side of the obeHsk is a focmtain 
with six jets, each tossing into the bronze basin above, a seventh fountain, 
at still greater elevation, overflowing and coming down to meet them. Rib- 
bons of rainbow flung on the air, golden rays of sunhght interwoven with 
silver skeins of water, while the wind drives the loom. Tritons, nereids, 
genii, dolphins, and winged children disporting themselves, and floods 
clapping their hands. 

"From the foot of the obeHsk, looking ofif to the south, is the Palace 
of the Legislature — its last touch of repairs having cost four million dollars 
— its gilded gates, and Corinthian columns, and statues of Justice, and 
Commerce, and Art, and Navigation — a building grand with Vernet's fresco. 



THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 467 

and Cortot's sculpture, and Delacroix's allegories of art, and the memory of 
Lamartine's eloquence, within it the hard face of stone soft with gobelin 
tapestry, and arabesque, and the walls curtained with velvet of crimson and 
gleaming gold. 

'Trom the foot of the obelisk, glancing to the north, the church of the 
Madeleine comes into sight, its glories Hfted up on the shoulders of fifty- 
two Corinthian columns, swinging against the dazed vision its huge brazen 
doors, its walls breaking into innumerable fragments of beauty, each piece 
a sculptured wonder, a king, an apostle, an archangel, or a Christ. The 
three cupolas against the sky great doxologies in stone. The whole building 
white, beautiful, stupendous — the frozen prayer of a nation. 

"From the foot of the obelisk, looking east through a long line of elms, 
chestnuts, and palms, is the palace of the Tuileries, confronting you with 
one thousand feet of facade, and tossed up at either side into imposing 
pavilions, and sweeping back into the most brilliant picture galleries of all 
the world, where the French masters look upon the Flemish, and the black 
marble of the Pyrenees frowns upon the drifted snow of Italian statuary, a 
palace poising its pinnacles in the sun, and spreading out balustrades of 
braided granite. Its inside walls adorned with blaze of red velvet cooling 
down into damask overshot with green silk. Palace of wild and terrific 
memories, orgies of drunken kings, and display of coronation festivity. 
Frightful Catherine de Medicis looked out of those windows. There, Marie 
Antoinette gazed up toward heaven through the dark lattice of her own 
broken heart. Into those doors rushed the Revolutionary mobs. On that 
roof the Angel of Death alighted and flapped its black wings on its way to 
smite in a day one hundred thousand souls. Majestic, terrible, beautiful, 
horrible, sublime palace of the Tuileries. The brightness of a hundred fete 
days sparkle in its fountains! The gore of ten thousand butcheries redden 
the upholstery! 

''Standing at the foot of the obehsk, we have looked toward the north, 
and the south, and the east. There is but one way more to look. Stretching 
away to the west, beyond the sculptured horses that seem all a-quiver with 
life from nostril to fetlock, and rearing till you fear the groom will no longer 



468 



THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 



be able to keep them from dashing off the pedestal, is the Champs Elysees, 
the great artery through which rolls the life of Parisian hilarity. It is, 
perhaps, the widest street in the world. You see two long lines of carriages, 
one flowing this way, the other that, filled with the merriment of the gayest 
city under the sun. There they go! viscounts and porters, cab-drivers of 
glazed hat taking passengers at two francs an hour, and coachman with 
rosetted hat, and lavender breeches, his coat-tails flung over the back of the 
high seat — a very constellation of brass buttons. Tramp, and rumble, and 
clatter! Two wheels, four wheels, one sorrel, two sorrels! Fast horse's 
mouth by twisted bit drawn tight into the chest, and slow horse's head 
hung out at long distance from the body, his feet too lazy to keep up. Crack ! 
crack! go a hundred whips in the strong grasp of the charioteers, warning 
foot-passengers to clear the way. Click! cHck! go the swords of the mounted 
horse-guards as they dash past, sashed, feathered, and epauletted. 

''On the broad pavements of this avenue all nations meet and mingle. 
This is a Chinese with hair in genuine pig-tail twist, and this a Turk with 
trousers enough for seven. Here, an Englishman built up solid from the 
foundation, buttressed with strength, the apotheosization of roast-beef and 
plum-pudding; you can tell by his looks that he never ate anything that 
disagreed with him. Here, an American so thin he fails to cast a shadow. 
There, a group of children playing blind-man's bufif, and, yonder, men at 
football, with a circle of a hundred people surrounding them. Old harpers 
playing their harps. Boys fiddling. Women with fountains of soda-water 
strapped to their back, and six cups dangling at their side, and tinkling a 
tiny bell to let the people know where they may get refreshment. Here, 
a circle of fifteen hobby-horses poised on one pivot, where girls in white 
dresses, and boys in coat of many colors swing round the circle. Puff of a 
hundred cigars. Peddler with a score of balloons to a string sending them 
up into the air, and willing for four sous to make any boy happy. Parrots 
holding up their ugliness by one claw, and swearing at passers-by in bad 
French. Canaries serenading the sunlight. Bagpipers with instruments in 
full screech. Tunch and Judy,' the unending joke of European cities, which 
is simply two doll-babies beating each other. 



THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 469 

"Passing on, you come upon another circle of fountains, six in number 
— small but beautiful, infantile fountains, hardly born before they die, rocked 
in cradle of crystal, then buried in sarcophagus of pearl. The water rises 
only a short distance and bends over, like the heads of ripe grain, as though 
the water-gods had been reaping their harvest, and here had stacked their 
sheaves. And now we find toy-carriages drawn by four goats with bells, and 
children riding, a boy of four years drawing the rein, mountebanks tumbling 
on the grass, jugglers with rings that turn into serpents, and bottles that 
spit white rabbits, and tricks that make the auditor's hat, passed up, breed 
rats. 

"On your way through the street, you wander into grottos, where, over 
colored rocks, the water falls, now becoming blue as the sea, now green as 
a pond, and now, without miracle, it is turned into wine. There are maiden- 
hair trees, and Irish yews, and bamboo, and magnolias, and banks 
of azaleas, and hollies, and you go through a Red Sea of geraniums 
and dahlias dry-shod. You leave on either hand concert castles, and parti- 
colored booths, and kiosks inviting to repose, till you come to the foot of 
the Arc de Triomphe, from the foot of which radiate eleven great avenues, 
any one of which might well be a national pride, and all of them a-rumble 
with pomp and wealth, and the shock of quick and resonant laughter. 

"On opposite sides of the archway are two angels, leaning toward each 
other till their trumpets well nigh touch, blowing the news of a hundred 
victories. Surely never before or since was hard stone ever twisted into 
such wreaths, or smoothed into such surfaces. Up and down frieze and 
spandrel are alti-rilievi with flags of granite that seem to quiver in the wind, 
and helmets that sit soft as velvet on warrior's brow, and there are lips 
of stone that look as if they might speak, and spears that look as if they 
might pierce, and wounds that look as if they might bleed, and eagles that 
look as if they might fly. Here stands an angel of war mighty enough 
to have been just hurled out of heaven. On one side of the Arch, Peace 
is celebrated by the sculptor with sheaves of plenty, and chaplets of honor, 
and palms of triumph. At a great height, Austerlitz is again enacted, and 



470 



THE CULTURE OF TALMAGE. 



horse and horsemen and artillery and gunners stand out as though some 
horror of battle chilled them all into stone. 

"By the time that you have mounted the steps, and stand at the top. 
of the Arch, the evening lamps begin a running fire on all the streets. The 
trees swing lanterns, and the eleven avenues concentrating at the foot of 
the Arch pour their brightness to your feet a very chorus of fire. Your eye 
treads all the way back to the Tuileries on bubbles of fame, and stopping 
half way the distance to read, in weird and bewitching contrivance of gas- 
light, an inscription with a harp of fire at the top and an arrow of fire at the 
bottom, the charmed words of every Frenchman, Champs Elysees.'' 



I 



CHAPTER XXX. 



A VISION OF THE FUTURE. 

TALMAGE PROPHESIES THE ''sUNDOWN'"' OF HIS OWN LIFE THE GLORIES OF 

THE NIGHT THE EVENING OF CHRISTIAN SORROW GRAND OLD AGE 

TO-DAY THE EARLY HISTORY OF EVERYTHING GOOD INSECURITY OF ALL 

EARTHLY TREASURE. 

Dr. Talmage died as he lived, in the full belief of a blessed hereafter. No 
preacher since Paul so continually declared a positive belief in the immor- 
tality of the soul; he poured out all the wealth of his imagination on this 
sublime subject, and one of his greatest sermons was preached from the 
text, "At eventime it shall be light," from Zachariah xiv., 7. There need 
be no tears shed at the grave of a man who lived in an atmosphere of such 
sublime faith as is expressed in the eloquent periods of this discourse. What- 
ever of sweetness or light or glory the future holds for any one it must 
hold for him. "While night in all languages," he says, "is the symbol for 
gloom and suffering, it is often really cheerful, bright and impressive. I 
speak not of such nights as come down with no star pouring light from 
above, or silvered wave tossing up light from beneath — murky, hurtling, 
portentous, but such as you often see when the pomp and magnificence 
of heaven turn out on night parade; and it seems as though the song which 
the morning stars began so long ago were chiming yet among the constella- 
tions, and the sons of God were shouting for joy. Such nights the sailor 
blesses from the forecastle, and the trapper on the vast prairie, and the 
belated traveler from the roadside, and the soldier from the tent, earthly 
hosts gazing on heavenly, and shepherds guarding their flocks afield,^while 
angel hands above them set the silver bells a ringing: 'Glory to God in the 
highest, and on earth peace; good will to men." 

This is not the night of the doubter, the disbeliever, the iconoclast. It 
is the night of a poet, a philosopher, a Christian who sees ''a vision of the 

471 



472 



^ VISION OF THE FUTURE. 



world and all the wonders that there be." It is the utterance of a man who 
believed that the religion of Jesus Christ is the grandest practical encour- 
agement any man can have; that it is not a mere phantasy of an over- 
wrought imagination, but something 'Vhich a man may enter with his 
entire physical, mental, and moral nature." 

To Dr. Talmage the Christian religion was an illumination. No matter 
how dark the. night he had no doubt of the morning. He found in the 
Gospel a solution to all mystery, even the mystery of death. "The religion 
of Christ," he declares, ''is never in all the Bible once represented as dark- 
ness. It is a lamp. It is a lantern. It is daybreak. It is noontide glory. 
It is irradiation. It is warmth." In the teachings of the Man of Galilee he 
found not only hope, joy, comfort, peace and the promise of eternal life, but 
he found in it the source of strength and power to perform herculean tasks, 
to overcome all obstacles, and to teach a religion so virile, so full of prac- 
tical suggestions and every-day usefulness that hardly a farm-house in 
America but had one or more of his books of sermons thumbed by loving 
study. 

And so in the evening of his life the golden shafts of the setting sun fell 
on a brow already irradiated with the crown of promise, and he went out 
into the great night of the unknown which he himself had apostrophized in 
these words: 

"What a solemn and glorious thing is night in the wilderness! Night 
among the mountains! Night on the ocean! Fragrant night among trop- 
ical groves! Flashing night amid arctic severities! Calm night on 
Roman Campagna ! ' Awful night among the Cordilleras ! Glorious night 
'mid sea after tempest! Thank God for the night! The moon and the stars 
which rule it are light-houses on the coast, toward which I hope we all are 
sailing, and blind mariners are we if, with so many beaming, burning, flam- 
ing glories to guide us, we cannot find our way into the harbor." 

So this great orator, daring preacher and thoughtful philanthropist 
looked upon the night of death. He seems to have lived as a great sea cap- 
tain lives, sure of his knowledge of the charts by which his course is steered, 
and with a serene belief of final entrance to the destined harbor. "At even- 



VISION OF THE FUTURE. 



time it shall be light" he quotes, and declares the prophecy applies not only 
to the evening of each life, but to the evening of the world, to the evening 
of the Christian religion. How well he understood the world and its activ- 
ities is apparent in the application made of the; foregoing prophecy to every- 
day affairs. 'Tor a long time it is broad daylight. The sun rides high. 
Innumerable activities go ahead with a thousand feet, and work with a 
thousand arms, and the pickaxe struck a mine, and the battery made a dis- 
covery, and the investment yielded its twenty per cent, and a book came to 
its twentieth edition, and the farm quadrupled in value, and sudden fortune 
hoisted to high position, and children were praised, and friends without 
number swarmed into the family hive, and prosperity sang in the music, 
and stepped in the dance, and glowed in the wine, and ate at the banquet, 
and all the gods of music, and ease, and gratification gathered around this 
Jupiter holding in his hands so many thunderbolts of power. But every 
sun must set, and the brightest day have its twilight. Suddenly the sky was 
overcast. The fountain dried up. The song hushed. The wolf broke into 
the family fold and carried off the best lamb. A deep howl of woe came 
crashing down through the joyous symphonies. At one rough twang of 
the hand of disaster the harp-strings all broke. Down went the strong busi- 
ness firm! Away went long-established credit! Up flew a flock of calum- 
nies! The new book would not sell. A patent could not be secured for the 
invention. Stocks sank like lead. The insurance company exploded. 
'How much,' says the sheriff, 'will you bid for this piano?' 'How much for 
this library?' 'How much for this family picture?' 'How much? Will you 
let it go at less than half price? Going — going — GONE!' " 

Such is the picture he paints of the sudden reversal of fortune that 
threatens those who have all their treasures laid up in this world. But for 
those who have the faith of the Fathers he finds consolation. For them is 
strength suppHed for the greatest trials. "Will the grace of God hold one 
up in such circum.stances?" He had no doubt of it. "What," he cries, 
"have become of the great multitude of God's children who have been 
pounded of the flail, and crushed under the wheel, and trampled under the 
hoof? Did they lie down in the dust, weeping, wailing and gnashing their 



'474 



A VISION OF THE FUTURE. 



teeth? * * * Did they kneel at their empty money-vault and say, 'All 
my treasures are gone?' Did they stand by the grave of their dead, saying. 
There never will be a resurrection?' * * Did the night of their dis- 
aster come upon them moonless, starless, dark, and howling, smothering 
and choking their life out? No! No! No! At eventime it was light. The 
swift promise overtook them. The eternal constellations, from their circuit 
about God's throne, poured down an infinite luster. Under their shining 
the billows of trouble took on crests, the plumes of gold, and jasper, and 
amethyst, and flame. All the trees of hfe rustled in the midsummer air of 
God's love. The night-blooming assurance of Christ's sympathy filled all 
the atmosphere with heaven. At eventide it was light. Streaming, joyous, 
outgiishing, everlasting LIGHT." 

LUMIN-OTJS WITH HIS RELIGION. 

This utterance is the very soul of Talmage. He was luminous with his 
religion. To him it was everything, all. Without a belief in the promise 
of the Scriptures he could see nothing in hfe worth the struggle required to 
maintain it. With that behef nothing was but held its separate worth, its 
joy, its rapture. He loved action even as a boy loves it. In his sermons 
and lectures he gave himself up to the thought to such a degree that his 
gestures for a time became the subject of ridicule. He was caricatured in 
the public prints. Fashionable congregations scofifed at what they called 
''the antics of the pulpit." He was tried for buffoonery by the Synod of his 
church. But he was a great natural force and came out of it all unscathed. 
He not only believed in life in the next world, but he believed in life, strong 
robust, healthful, here and now. 'Tt is a grand thing to be young," he cries, 
"to have the sight clear, and the hearing acute, and the step elastic, and all 
our pulses marching on to the drumming of a stout heart. Mid-life and old 
age will be denied many of us — but youth — we all know what that is. Those 
wrinkles were not always on your brow. That snow was not always on your 
head. That brawny muscle did not always bunch your arm. You have not 
always worn spectacles. Grave and dignified as you now are, you once went 
coasting down the hill-side, or threw ofif your hat for the race, or sent the 



A VISION OF THE FUTURE, 



475 



ball flying sky-high. But youth will not always last. It stays only long 
enough to give us exuberant spirits, and broad shoulders for burden-carry- 
ing, and an arm with which to battle our way through difficulties. Life's 
path, if you follow it long enough, will come under frowning crag and across 
trembling causeway. Blessed old age, if you let it come naturally. You 
cannot hide it. You may try to cover the wrinkles, but you cannot cover 
the wrinkles. If the time has come for you to be old, be not ashamed to 
be old. The grandest things in all the universe are old. Old mountains; 
old rivers; old seas; old stars, and an old eternity. Then do not be 
ashamed to be old, unless you are older than the mountains, and older than 
the stars. 

''Glorious old age, if found in the way of righteousness! How beautiful 
the old age of Jacob, leaning on the top of his staff; of John Quincy Adams, 
falling with the harness on; of Washington Irving, sitting, pen in hand, amid 
the scenes himself had made classical; of John Angell James, to the last 
proclaiming the Gospel to the masses of Birmingham; of Theodore Freling- 
huysen, down to feebleness and emaciation devoting his illustrious faculties 
to the kingdom of God! At eventime it was light! 

HONOR TO THE AGED. 

"See that you do honor to the aged. A philosopher stood at the corner 
of the street day after day, saying to the passers-by, 'You will be an old 
man; you will be an old man.' 'You will be an old woman; you will be 
an old woman.' People thought that he was crazy. I do not think that 
he was. Smooth the way for that mother's feet; they have not many more 
steps to take. Steady those tottering limbs; they will soon be at rest. 
Plow not up that face with any more wrinkles; trouble and care have 
marked it full enough. Thrust no thorn into that old heart; it will soon 
cease to beat. 'The eye that mocketh its father, and refuseth to obey its 
mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall 
eat it.' The bright morning and hot noon-day of life have passed with 
many. It is four o'clock! five o'clock! six o'clock! The shadows fall longer, 
and thicker, and faster. Seven o'clock! eight o'clock! The sun has dipped 



476 



A VISION OF THE FUTURE. 



below the horizon; the warmth has gone out of the air. Nine o'clock! ten 
o'clock! The heavy dews are falling; the activities of life's day are all 
hushed; it is time to go to bed. Eleven o'clock! twelve o'clock! The patri- 
arch sleeps the blessed sleep, the cool sleep, the long sleep. Heaven's mes- 
sengers of light have kindled bonfires of victory all over the heavens. Ai 
eventime it is light ! LIGHT ! 

CIVILIZATIOir JUST OUT OF THE CRADLE. 

'Tt is early yet in the history of everything good. Civilization and Chris- 
tianity are just getting out of the cradle. The light of martyr-stakes, flash- 
ing all up and down the sky, is but the flaming of the morning; but when 
the evening of the world shall come, glory to God's conquering truth, it 
shall be light. War's sword clanging back in the scabbard; intemperance 
buried under ten thousand broken decanters; the world's impurity turning 
its brow heavenward for the benediction, 'Blessed are the pure in heart;* 
the last vestige of selfishness submerged in heaven-descending charities; all 
China worshiping Dr. Abeel's Savior; all India believing in Henry Martyn's 
Bible; aboriginal superstition acknowledging David Brainard's piety; human 
bondage delivered through Thomas Clarkson's Christianity; vagrancy com- 
ing back from its pollution at the call of Elizabeth Fry's Redeemer; the 
mountains coming down; the valleys going up; 'holiness' inscribed on horse's 
bell, and silk-worm's thread, and brown-thrasher's wing, and shell's tinge, 
and manufacturer's shuttle, and chemist's laboratory, and king's sceptre, and 
nation's Magna Charta. Not a hospital, for there are no wounds; not an 
asylum, for there are no orphans; not a prison, for there are no criminals; 
not an almshouse, for there are no paupers; not a tear, for there are no sor- 
rows. The long dirge of earth's lamentation has ended in the triumphal 
march of redeemed empires, the forests harping it on vine-strung branches, 
the waters chanting it among the gorges, the thunders drumming it among 
the hills, the ocean giving it forth with its organs, trade-winds touching the 
keys, and Euroclydon's foot on the pedal. I want to see John Howard 
when the last prisoner is reformed; I want to see Florence Nightingale when 
the last sabre-wound has stopped hurting; I want to see William Penn when 



A VISION, OF THE FUTURE. 



477 



the last Indian has been civilized; I want to see John Huss when the last 
flame of persecution has been extinguished; I want to see John Bunyan 
after the last pilgrim has come to the gate of the celestial city; above all, I 
want to see Jesus after the last saint has his throne, and begun to sing 
Hallelujah! 

THE BLESSEDNESS OF SILENCE. 

''You have watched the calmness and the glory of the evening hour. 
The laborers have come from the field. The heavens are glowing with an 
indescribable effulgence, as though the sun in departing had forgotten to 
shut the gate after it. All the beauty of cloud and leaf swim in the lake. 
For a star in the sky, a star in the water; heaven above, and heaven beneath. 
Not a leaf rustling, or a bee humming, or a grasshopper chirping. Silence 
in the meadow; silence in the orchard; silence among the hills. 

"Thus bright and beautiful shall be the evening of the world. The heats 
of earthly conflict are cooled. The glory of heaven fills all the scene with 
love, and joy, and peace. At eventime it is light! LIGHT! 

"Finally, my text shall find fulfillment at the end of the Christian's life. 
You know how short a winter's day is, and how little work you can do. 
Now, my friends, life is a short winter's day. The sun rises at eight and 
sets at four. The birth-angel and the death-angel fly only a little way apart. 
Baptism and burial are near together. With one hand the mother rocks 
the cradle, and with the other she touches a grave. 

"I went into the house of one of my parishioners on Thanksgiving day. 
The little child of the household was bright and glad, and with it I bounded 
up and down the hall. Christmas day came, and the light of that household 
had perished. We stood, with black book, reading over the grave, 'Ashes 
to ashes, dust to dust.' 

"But I hurl away this darkness. I cannot have you weep. Thanks be 
unto God, who giveth us the victory, at eventime it shall be light! 

"I have seen many Christians die. I never saw any of them die in dark- 
ness. What if the billows of death do rise above our girdle, who does not 
love to bathe? What though other hghts do go out in the blast, what do 
v/e want of them when all the gates of glory swing open before us, and from 



478 



A VISION OF THE FUTURE. 



a myriad voices, a myriad harps, a myriad thrones, a myriad palaces, there 
dash upon us 'Hosannah! Hosannah!' 

Throw back the shutters and let the sun in,' said dying Scoville McCol- 
lum, one of my Sabbath-school boys. 

"You can see Paul putting on robes and wings of ascension as he ex- 
claims, '1 have fought the good fight; I have finished my course; I have 
kept the faith/ 

"Hugh McKail went to one side of the scaffold of martyrdom and cried, 
'Farewell sun, moon, and stars! farewell all earthly deHghts!' Then went to 
the other side of the scaffold and cried, 'Welcome, God and Father! Wel- 
come, sweet Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the covenant! Welcome, death! 
Welcome, glory!' 

"A minister of Christ in Philadelphia, dying, said, in his last moments, 
7 move into the light/ 

"They did not go down doubting, and fearing, and shivering, but their 
battle-cry rang through all the caverns of the sepulchre, and was echoed 
back from all the thrones of heaven, 'O death! where is thy sting? O grave! 
where is thy victory?' Sing, my soul, of joys to come. 

"I saw a beautiful being wandering up and down the earth. She 
touched the aged, and they became young. She touched the poor, and 
they became rich. I said, 'Who is this beautiful being, wandering up and 
down the earth?' They told me that her name was Death. What a strange 
thrill of joy when the palsied Christian begins to use his arm again! When 
the blind Christian begins to see again! When the deaf Christian begins 
to hear again! When the poor pilgrim puts his feet on such pavement, and 
joins in such company, and has a free seat in such a great temple! Hungr}^ 
men no more to hunger; thirsty men no more to thirst; weeping men no 
more to weep; dying men no more to die. Gather up all sweet words, all 
jubilant expressions, all rapturous exclamations; bring them to me, and I 
will pour them upon this stupendous theme of the soul's disenthrallment I 
Oh! the joy of the spirit as it shall mount up toward the throne of God, 
shouting Free! Free! Your eye has gazed upon the garniture of earth and 
heaven; but eye hath not seen it. Your ear has caught harmonies un- 



A VISION. Oi^ THE FUTURE. 



counted and indescribable — caught them from harp's trill, and bird's carol, 
and waterfall's dash, and ocean's doxology; but the ear hath not heard it. 
How did those blessed ones get up into the Hght? What hammer knocked 
off their chains? What loom wove their robes of light? Who gave them 
wings? Ah! eternity is not long enough to tell it; seraphim have not capac- 
ity enough to reahze it — the marvels of redeeming love! Let the palms 
wave; let the crowns glitter; let the anthems ascend; let the trees of Lebanon 
clap their hands — they cannot tell the half of it. Archangel before the 
throne, thou failest! 

"Light in the evening. The medicines may be bitter. The pain may 
be sharp. The parting may be heart-rending. Yet, light in the evening. 
As all the stars of this night sink their anchors of pearl in lake, and river, and 
sea, so the waves of Jordan shall be illuminated with the down-flashing of 
the glory to come. 

*'The dying soul looks up at the constellations. The Lord is my Hght 
and my salvation: whom shall I fear?' The Lamb which is in the midst of 
the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water, and God shall wipe 
away all tears from their eyes.' 

"Close the eyes of the departed one: earth would seem tame to its 
enchanted vision. Fold the hands: life's work is ended. Veil the face: it 
has been transfigured. 

"Mr. Toplady, in his dying hour, said, *Light.' Coming nearer the expir- 
ing moment, he exclaimed, with illuminated countenance, *Light!' In the 
last instant of his breathing, he hfted up his hands and cried, 'Light! 
Light !' 

"Thank God for light in the evening!" 

And to this sweet closing prayer there must rise in every heart a 
responsive Amen. 






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